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PRINCIPLES OF 

GOVERNMENT 

ORGANIZATION 

AND 

MANAGEMENT 


oe 

Prepared hy 

Frederick A. Cleveland 
with assistance, in preparation of materials, of 
Lieut. Clarence B. Smith, Jr. 

Army Educational Commission 

DEPARTMENT OF CITIZENSHIP 

Bureau of Government Organization and Management 


CIT. 7, 4-16-19. 10 M. 


The Department of Citizenship, Army Educational Commis¬ 
sion, presents in its pamphlets the points of view of eminent 
publicists and leaders of public opinion of various groups with¬ 
out committing the Army Educational Commission to any par¬ 
ticular views on subjects of possible controversy. Its main 
obj ect is to present fundamental principles and stimulate intel¬ 
ligent study of the problems of citizenship by the members of 
the American Expeditionary Forces. 

Books listed in this pamphlet under the head of Reading 
References may be had through the Department of Citizenship, 
Army Educational Commission. Books listed here under Addi¬ 
tional Reading may perhaps be found in the reference libra¬ 
ries at the Y. M. C. A. huts. All the books named may also be 
found in any good public library in the United States. Titles 
of books, etc., given as references and printed in italic type 
will generally be found most useful for elementary students, 
and titles in plain type for more advanced students. 

It is hoped that members of the A. E. F. may feel sufficiently 
interested in the courses they have attended to keep up their 
reading after their return to America. 


/) 


PRINCIPLES OF 

GOVERNMENT 

ORGANIZATION 

AND 

MANAGEMENT 





Prepai'ed />?/ 

pREDEiiicK A. Cleveland 
rvith assistance, in preparation of materials, of 
Lieut. Clarence B. Smith, Jr. 


Army Educational Commission 

DEPARTMENT* OF CITIZENSHIP 

Bureau of Government Organization and Management 


CIT. 7. 4-16-19. 10 M, 



Copyright. 1919 

By FREDERICK A. CLEVELAND 
All rights reserved 



M/ll' I4 igiy 

1§)CI.A5{5(;5 8 





FOREWORD 


i J Did you ever feel lonely in a crowd—get the idea that you 
were just one among thousands of unrelated human atoms 
moving about with nothing in common, the motive of each 
unknown to all others? 

In such a group or crowd there is no impulse to co-operate. 

Were you ever in a street throng when some one high above 
you threw open a window and cried “fire”—the unrelated 
street throng suddenly becoming one in interest and sympathy? 
Smoke is pouring from windows. The man wildly waves his 
hands and calls for help. 

In that street crowd there is a common impulse to get some¬ 
thing done—to act toward common ends—yet nothing is done, 
for no one points the way. 

Here is a common impulse, hut as yet no organization. 

Then the shrill voice of a siren is heard. The crowd gives 
way to a “steamer” and a “truck” with a dozen men and a 
ca})tain in charge. A hundred-foot hose is run to a hydrant; 
a fifty-foot ladder is raised; the man in danger is rescued; the 
fire is put out before great damage is done. 

Here is organization, and through organization there is 
team-work — co-operation. 

Did you ever see an unorganized crowd which had gathered 
around a street car collision at a crossing suddenly changed 
into an organized life saving crew? First a crash! Then a 
moment later an inert curious crowd ! Then some one steps to 
the front and with a voice of appeal and command: one squad 


FOREWORD 


<2 


is organized to lift the wreekage; another is organized to admin¬ 
ister first aid. Eaeh gang and squad gathers around its leader 
and all work together under a common head in a common cause. 

Here leadership asserted itself. 

Did you ever see a football game in which the players of 
one team deposed their quarterback and put another in his place 
—but kept the old quarterback still in the game? ^ 

Here was control over leadership. 

If you have seen these things you have seen the conditions 
which make democracy impossible on the one hand, or on the 
other hand make it the most effective form of co-operation. A 
great organization like a government is necessarily made up of 
many people playing many parts; but the success of democratic 
government—government controlled by the will of the people— 
depends on four things: 

Impulse to Co-operate —The people must have common ideals 
and purposes; otherwise they can have no will or opin- 

rj 

ion to express. 

Team-worh —Both economic and political freedom depend on 
co-operation, team-work, and this means that the people 
must organize to achieve common ends. ' 

Leadership —There must be a planning and directing force 
with power to issue orders and compel obedience, to 
develop and enforce discipline; otherwise, organization 
and effective co-operation for common purposes are im¬ 
possible. 

Control Over Leadership —The people must have the institu¬ 
tional means for finding out what their will is, and for 
impressing this on the leadership and through organiza¬ 
tion and leadership on the members; there must be a 
means of control through which the co-operative effort 


FOREWORD 


3 


may be kept in harmony with the ideals and purposes 
of a majority. 

Co-operation may be made effeetive under an irresponsible 
^overeign—this is autoeraey. Autoeratic leadership may have 
regard for common ideals—may serve common purposes and for 
a time inspire loyalty. But sooner or later there comes a part¬ 
ing of the ways. Autocratic leadership becomes distrusted; then 
the people reach out for control. If the institutional means is 
not provided for doing this in orderly fashion, change comes by 
revolution. It is a fact which must challenge the attention of a 
thinking world that the two oldest governments today are democ¬ 
racies—Great Britain and the United States. That peace only 
can be permanent which is consistent with common ideals of 
liberty and justice—with the right of self-determination and 
with rules of conduct which are accepted and acceptable to a 
majority of the membership of the co-operating political group. 
Institutions grow which provide the means whereby they may 
be adj usted currently to meet the ever changing conditions and 
demands of the people governed. Given an effective means for 
developing leadership, and for controlling it, and the institu¬ 
tions of democracy may survive as long and possess as much 
vigor as the political society which they serve. The four fac¬ 
tors given are the necessary conditions of continuing order be¬ 
cause they are the essentials to order, based on mutual confi¬ 
dence and good will—the adhesive force of society itself— 
through which must come individual contentment and happiness 
as well as common welfare. 




\ 



CONTENTS 


Chapter I 

PAGE 

Common Ideals and Purposes—The Impulse to Co¬ 
operate . 7-3G 

CoiTirnon interests the basis of group impulse. 7 

Material interests the basis of group action... 8 

Ideals tlie basis of group action. 10 

What men have sought to get away from. 11 

Adverse economic conditions. 12 

Institutions of inequality.13 

What men associated in groups have sought. 13 

Liberty^—the right of self-determination—freedom of 

choice . 14 

Equality of opportunity—social justice. 15 

Law an essential to liberty and equality...;. 17 

I-,aw as perfectly adjusted co-operation. 17 

I.aw must be consistent with liberty. 18 

The sphere of liberty—must be consistent with equality 

, of opportunity to others. 19 

What is Democracy.^.. 20 

The foundations of American Democracy. 21 

bhnigration as a means of escape from Autocracy.... 22 

Revolution as a means of eflFecting change. 23 

Efforts to prevent establishment of Autocracy in New 

World . 23 

America’s great struggle for freedom. 24 

The Spirit of 177G. 2G 

Jefferson’s interpretation of freedom. 28* 

Hamilton’s interpretation of justice. 29 

The Old World fight for freedom. 30 

The attack on the Bastille as the symbol of Absolutism 30 
Attack upon the feudal militaristic state. 30 

























6 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Europe’s tribute to America. 31 

America’s Response. 31 

The war for World Democracy. 33 

The good-will of mankind. 34 


Chapter II 


Organization — An £ssenti 2 J to Co-operation .37-50 

The interdependence of mankind. 37 

Individual liberty and opportunity—mutual service. 38 

Limitations of “The Simple Life”. 39 

Liberty enlarged through widening co-operative oppor¬ 
tunity for service. 40 

Democratic co-operation—freedom of choice. 41 

Specialization a means of enlarging opportunity. 42 

The choice of a vocation—its relation to liberty and 

service to others. 42 

Education—training in liberty as well as co-operation.. 43 

Training in obedience as training in liberty. 44 

^ Under a democracy, the highest achievement open to all 45 

Organizing a free nation. 46 

Disorganization not freedom—limits opportunity. 47 

Liberty through political union. 48 

Results of organization and training as seen in war.. 49 


Chapter III 


Leadership—A Necessity in Co-operation .51-75 

Organization requires leadership. 51 

Where the element of free-will is absent. 52 

I.eadership necessary where there is individual choice.. 52 
Elements of advantage to be conserved through leader¬ 
ship . 52 

The need for organized leadership. 63 

Organized leadership in industrial co-operation. 64 

Organized leadership in military co-operation. 65 

Lack of organized leadership in government. 56 


























CONTENTS 


6a 


PAGE 

Leadership in government. 66 

Our Constitution of government. 67 

Its adequacy for the development of leadership. 68 

Popular fear of organized leadership. 69 

Reliance on limitations of power instead of popular 

control . 60 

The executive deprwed of leadership. 62 

I.eadership divided within the government. 62 

Initiative in standing-committees. 63 , 

The clash of rival interests. 64 

Leadership developed outside the government. 66 

The leadership of Thomas Jefferson . 66 

The leadership of Andrew Jackson . 67 

The leadership of Abraham Lincoln . 68 

American leadership personal, not official. 68 

The development of the “Boss”. 69 

Irresponsible leadership—the product of reliance on 
limitations of powers instead of reliance on popular 

control . 71 

Leadership, responsible or irresponsible, inevitable. 72 

The demand for responsible leadership. 73 

Ability to choose and control leadership the test of a 

Democracy . 74 

Chapter IV 

Control Over Leadership—An Essential of Democ¬ 
racy . 77-115 

An idea of public service without popular control. 77 

<^Popular control an essential of Democracy. 78 

The Flag—the symbol of popular sovereignty. 79 

Why popular sovereignty?. 79 

Reconciliation of sovereignty with liberty. 80 

Popular control the only sure foundation for institution 

building . 82 

Revolution the result of lack of institutional provision 

for popular control. 83 





























6b 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

Assumptions of “divine right” versus popular control.. 84 

The basis for permanent peace and progress. 87 

Provisions for popular control necessary to the development 

of leadership . 87 

Control over executive leadership the primary function 

of representative systems. 89 

Control over purse not enough.*.. 90 

Four essentials of the mechanism of popular control....*.. 90 

Jefferson’s statement of princij^les of control. 91 

The development of these four principles in America 

and Great Britain. 92 

The principle of popular elections. 93 

The principle of acceptance of the judgment of the 

majority . 93 

The principle of arraignment of leaders to be tried 

on evidence . 94 

The principle of recall. 97 

The experience of France and Germany. 99 

Canadian experience as applied to the third principle 

of control . 100 

Irresponsible leadership the result of lack of an effective 

mechanism of control. 101 

Tlie adjustment of the mechanism of control to our consti¬ 
tutional system . 103 

Favorable public opinion an essential. 103 

The possibility of making the four principles of control 

effective by change of “rules”. 104 

Congress the instrument of iiupiiry, criticism, and dis¬ 
cussion . 105 

A possible procedure for insuring “visible” and “re¬ 
sponsible” government . 105 

The trial . 107 

The people as auditors. 108 

Responsible leadership, a necessary result. 108 

Need for conservatism in making institutional changes.... 109 
Changes needed to make popular control effective need not 

change organization of government. 112 

Constitutional revision may be taken up later, if needed.. 113 

























PRINCIPLES OF GOVERNMENT 
ORGANIZATION AND 
MANAGEMENT 

I 

% 

COMMON IDEALS AND PURPOSES—THE IMPULSE 
TO CO-OPERATE. 

**The sacred rights of mankind are not to be rummaged for 
among old parchments or musty records. They are written, as 
with a sunbeam, in the whole volume of human nature . . . 

and can never be erased or obscured by mortal power.** 

Common Interests the Basis of Group Impulse 

Before free men consent to live together and act together 
they must have, and be conscious of, a common purpose. Not 
only must there be a feeling of common interest, common needs 
and common desires, but each must be convinced that he indi¬ 
vidually can best attain his purpose by working with others. 

It has been said that every successful undertaking is but the 
length and breadth of the shadow of a man. This idea is use¬ 
ful to emphasize the value of leadership, but standing alone and 
unrelated to other human and social factors, it may do much 
harm—in fact it is the kind of half truth of which autocracies 
have been built—it causes men to overlook the thing on which 
all leadership depends. The strength of a leader is not his; 
it is the strength of his combined following. And a following 
is made possible only by finding a way to appeal to men for 


8 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


support—something that will arouse enthusiasm for a proposed 
undertaking and give confidence in its success and mutual ad¬ 
vantage. 

The spiritual ingredients of group strength are these: a com¬ 
mon interest; an appeal which sets up a common impulse; the 
will, or willingness to co-operate, to act with others for the 
achievement of a common purpose.^ 

Herbert Spencer pointed out that there could be no such 
thing as a family if the adult members did not find it to their 
mutual advantage to live together. 

Good manners, morals, social customs, all social regulations, 
rest on the same basis—the recognition of common interest to 
be served. 

Material Interests as a Basis of Group Action 

The most common interest to which appeal may be made is a 
desire to satisfy physical wants, and to be protected from 
physical harm. “Self preservation is the first law of nature.” 
To make this quite clear let us take an inventory of our own 
feelings. Or still better, let us take the consensus of thought 
and feeling uppermost in the mind of each man in that great 
army which found itself stranded “overseas” last November. 
From thousands of men, every day since the armistice was 
signed, have come these two questions: 

When do we go home ? 

What kind of a job shall we have when we get there 

^Reference Reading: A. W. Dunn, ^'The Community oind the 
Citizen’'; Chap. I, “The Beginning of a Community.” 

^Slides: “Leave Taking—good-bye brave France”; leaving; arrival 
at New York; reception committee; street welcome with decora¬ 
tions and arches; discharged. Home again. The question still 
unanswered—^“Now I am home, what kind of a job do I get?” 

Current Reading: George Pattullo, *‘Under His Tin Hat,” 
(“Doughboys in Politics”); Saturday Evening Post, April 5, 
1919. 

Reference Reading: Beard, ^^American Citizenship”; Chap. Ill 
“The Family.” 


tHE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


9 


The process of recruiting was one of taking men away from 
their old jobs. When the men who followed the flag are dis¬ 
charged their first thought is for work. Thousands of men 
each day go to the employment office to find work. Interrogate 
them as they come in; ask each man what brought him there: 

Q. Why do you want a j ob ? 

A.'To make a living. 

Q. What do you mean by a living.^ 

A. Food; clothing; shelter; health; comfortable and safe 
working conditions. ' 

Q. But in a broader or social sense what does it mean? 

A. In addition to creature-comforts it means a bright and 
cheerful home; good neighbors; attractive surround- , 
ings; happy and healthy children; community service 
for good water, light and transit; other community 
service. 

This is what a job meant to every man before he answered 
the call of President Wilson, to help in camp and workshop to 
end the war on democracy. Now that there is no more fighting 
to be done—what now ? The army is being rapidly discharged ; 
the world again turns to ways of peace; every fighter is anxious 
about his job. He wishes to get back to a normal basis in 
which he can “do his bit” in a manner useful to society and 
satisfying to himself. He is looking for conditions of service 
which will exemplify the ideals that he has fought for. But 
tliis thought is not confined to the present day and hour.^ 

American history has been written around group interests 

^Slides: An industrial city—smoke stacks in the distance. A 
crowded street; going to work; the line at the pay window. 
Going West—the settler’s express. 

Reference Readings; Lapp, “Our America—The Elements of 
Civics’f; Chap. I, “The Work and Needs of People”; Chap. II, 
“Supplying Common Needs.” 

A. W. Dunn, “The Community and the Citizen’*; Chap. IV, 
“Wliat the People in Communities are Seeking”; Chap. V, 
“The Family.” 


10 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

that are summed up in the phrase, “Equality of Opportunity”— 
the disposition of Nature’s resources, and the regulation of co¬ 
operative undertakings to make a living, in such manner as will 
give to each man a chance to satisfy his physical wants while 
engaged in a pursuit of his own choice, one which in his judg¬ 
ment is best suited to his own abilities and will contribute most 
to his own happiness. 

“Our national purpose is to transmute days of 
weary toil into happier lives—for ourselves first and 
for all others in their time.” (Secretary Franklin K. 
Lane.) 

Ideals as a Basis of Group Action 

Desire to satisfy physical wants is the motive power which 
causes men to choose a career and prepare for it; to seek em¬ 
ployment or to join their labor with others; to organize com¬ 
panies and build cities. But there is something bigger and 
broader; something that causes men and women to go hungry 
if need be; something that will take them away from the ordi¬ 
nary comforts to which they are accustomed and to break home 
ties.^ 

What have those men and women in mind who for the first 
time look to America’s friendly shores and in the distance catch 
the emblem that stands out on the skyline above Bedloe’s 
Island.^ What have these people in mind as related to home 
and living conditions that may not have been in the thought of 
the returning American soldier, or the American family going 
West.^ Like the Children of Israel when they left the slavery 
of Egypt and crossed the Red Sea, they are trying to get away 
from something; they are seeking something. 

* Slides: Emigrants preparing to leave; parting with friends; 
going on board ship; coming into New York with the Statue 
of Idherty in the background. Ellis Island. Immigrants 
landing; immigrant group. 

Reference Reading: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals’’' 
pp. 178-182. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


11 


What Men Have Sought to Get Away From 

In talking to a company of men and women at Philadelphia 
who had come from foreign shores and had been admitted to 
our citizenship_, President Wilson interpreted their visions: 

“You have said ‘We are going to America’ not only 
to earn a living, not only to seek the things which it 
was more difficult to obtain where you were born, but 
to help forward the great enterprises of the human 
spirit—to let men know everywhere in the world that 
there are men who will cross strange oceans and go 
where a speech is spoken which is alien to them, know¬ 
ing that, whatever the speech, there is but one long¬ 
ing and utterance of the human heart, and that is for 
liberty and justice. 

“We came to America, either ourselves or in the 
persons of our ancestors, to better the ideals of men, 
to make them see finer things than they had seen be¬ 
fore, to get rid of things that divided, and to make 
sure of the things that unite.’’ (President Wilson, 
Address to Naturalized Americans, Philadelphia, May 
10, 1915.) 

An intimate view of the common thought which has caused 
millions of men to move their families to new lands and new 
promise is given by Mary Antin: 

“Almost his (my father’s) first act on landing on 
American soil, three years before, had been his appli¬ 
cation for naturalization. . . . It is true that he 

had left home in search of bread for his hungry fam¬ 
ily, but he went blessing the necessity that drove him 
to America. The boasted freedom of the New World 
meant to him far more than the right to reside, travel 
and work wherever he pleased; it meant the freedom 
to speak his thoughts, to throw off the shackles of 
superstition, to test his own fate, unhindered by po¬ 
litical or religious tyranny. He was only a young 
man when he landed—thirty-two; and most of his life 
he had been held in leading strings. He was hungry 
for his untastcd manhood.” (Mary Antin: **The 
Promised Land.’’ p. 202.) 


12 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Adverse Economic Conditions 

Suggestion of economic and social conditions which repel is 
found in many places—in art, in literature, in the history of 
peoples everywhere. Millet gives us one such in his **Man 
with a Hoe/’ The following excerpts are from Edward Mark¬ 
ham’s interpretation 


Bowed by the weight of centuries he leans 
Upon his hoe and gazes on the ground. 

The emptiness of ages in his face, 

And on his back the burden of the world. 

Who made him dead to rapture and despair 
A thing that grieves not and that never hopes. 

Stolid and stunned, a brother of the ox.^ 

Is this the thing the Lord God made and gave 
To have dominion over sea and land; 

To trace the stars and search the heavens for power; 

To feel the passion of Eternity.^ 

Down all the stretch of Hell to its last gulf 
There is no shape more terrible than this— 

More tongued with censure of the world’s blind greed— 

Through this dread shape the suffering ages look; 

Time’s tragedy is in that aching stoop; 

Through this dread shape humanity, betrayed. 

Plundered, profaned and disinherited. 

Cries protest to the judges of the world, 

A protest that is also prophecy. 

How will it be with Kingdoms and with Kings— 

With those who shaped him to the thing he is— 

When this dumb Terror shall reply to God 
After the silence of the centuries ? 

^Slides: The Man with a Hoe—Millet; The Gleaners; The Angelus; 
The Toil-worn Cotter; The Sweeper. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


13 


Institutions of Inequality 

Both Millet and Markham speak of a human product that is 
hateful—a product of a sordid hateful system of co-operation 
in which a large number of men and women are not able to sat¬ 
isfy even their simple wants—an institutionalism which benefits 
some and leaves little opportunity to others. They have painted 
in some of the background that has caused men to turn around, 
and set their concern toward a new land—a Land of Promise. 
In these old conditions, opportunities were unequal: some were 
favored at the expense of others. The conditions unfavorable 
to those who turned away from them were found in the rules 
or laws governing co-operation—in a government which had 
become autocratic in its operation because it maintained and 
enforced monopolies and inequalities. Autocracy is industrial 
as well as social and political. Laws for the perpetuation of 
autocracy have taken on many forms.® 

What Men Associated in Groups Have Sought 

The great streams of emigration that men have embarked on 
are evidence of the desire to get away from unfavorable condi- 

® Slides : Landlordism—monopoly of land; the Irish famine. 

Serfdom—a scheme of enforced service; Japanese farm 
laborer. 

Caste—A social system by which certain functions are com¬ 
mitted to certain classes. Under it the lower classes or castes 
are each fettered to the profession of their ancestors, thereby 
rendering any improvement on their part impossible. High 
and low caste Brahmins; Hindu of high caste; low caste natives. 

Slavery—ownership by one man of another body and soul; 
slave market at Constantinople. 

These pictures also have had an obverse which bring into 
contrast results which have caused men to think. 

Slides: Coronation of Louis XIV; Moliere at Court of Louis XIV; 
Portrait, Louis XIV; Louis XIV on horseback; Literary Circle 
of Louis XIV. The Throne Room at Fontainebleau; Reception 
Room of Catherine de Medici; Portrait Marie Antoinette; The 
Palace at Marseilles; State Coach of Napoleon I; Bedroom of 
Marie Antoinette; Grand Mosque, Delhi; The Alcazar, Seville; 
The Giralda, Seville; The Throne Room, Delhi; The Court of 
Alhambra. 


14 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


tions and to find conditions which are more favorable. Many 
times these conditions have been economic inequality. There 
has been a desire to go to countries and conditions which have 
held out promise of larger individual opportunity. Aside from 
the common desire to satisfy physical want, men have sought 
for something which they have called “liberty/’ “justice,” “hu¬ 
manity.”’ 

“To them America was not simply a new home; it 
was a land of opportunity, of freedom, of democ- 
rac3^ If meant to them as to the American pioneer 
that preceded them, the opportunity to destroy the 
bonds of social caste that bound them in their older 
home, to hew out for themselves in a new country a 
destiny proportioned to the powers that God had 
given them. He who believes that even the hordes 
of recent immigrants from Southern Italy are drawn 
to these shores by nothing more than a dull, blind 
materialism has not penetrated into the heart of the 
problem.” {Frederick J. Turner.') 

What is liberty.^ What is meant by justice? What is it 
that those who protest against autocracy call humanity V 

Liberty 

As you look iqjon the face of that Indian woman, laboring 
along the wooded path, with a papoose strapped to her back; 
as you follow her thru the work of the day, do you get the 
jjicture of freedom; do the lines in her face tell a story of free 
womanhood; do the conditions of Indian life as commonly found 
tell a story of free manhood, or do they tell a story of squalor 
and poverty? The society is a communism; it may be polit¬ 
ically free. But would a regime which continues squalor and 
poverty mean liberty’? It may be a condition founded on social 
justice. But as a plan of co-operation it does not spell out 

^Slides: The Indian Woman; Grinding Corn (the hand millstones) ; 

The Lone Cabin; Miners of ’49; The Prospector. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


15 


welfare, as compared with another order of things which makes 
for higher happiness, even though there is not so much political 
freedom. They may be just but not humanly desirable. The 
Lone Cabin and the Prospector—do they bring to our minds 
the idea of freedom.^ Or do they exemplify sacrifice for some¬ 
thing hoped for but not realized.^ What is suggested is this: 
that there may be the greatest institutional freedom uijder con¬ 
ditions which make for economic slavery. The Indian Woman 
and the Prospector are leading lives which if persisted in would 
produce types of men and women that would be fitting com¬ 
panion pieces to Millet’s “Man With a Hoe’’ and “The 
Sweeper.” 

“Liberty!” “Justice!” “Humanity!” The things sought 
for in the realization of these ideals are conditions that both 
free the body and free the mind; conditions in which each man 
shall have equality of opportunity. Why.^ Because the wel¬ 
fare of all depends on co-operation; and any scheme of co¬ 
operation which satisfies our ideals must still leave to each indi¬ 
vidual the right to choose his way, and to give him an equal 
chance to make the most of his choice. A scheme of co-opera¬ 
tion for satisfying want must be developed which is consistent 
with liberty and equal justice. Thus happiness is attained 
through mutual helpfulness. The motto of democracy is 
“Each for All and All for Each.” The only sure foundation 

for civilization and human achievement is the elevation of each 
by the elevation of all. This is the social significance of the 
doctrine of equalit}^ 

Equality of Opportunity 

From an Englishman, who has been highly critical of Amer¬ 
ica in its ruder aspects, comes a tribute to the social value of 
the principle of equality. 

“Americans are immigrants and descendants of im¬ 
migrants. . . . What America does ... is 


16 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


to obliterate distinctions. One does not then find in 
America anything one does not find in Europe; but 
one finds in Europe what one does not find in Amer¬ 
ica. One finds, as well as the average, what is below 
and what is above it. America has, broadly speak¬ 
ing, no waste products. The wreckage, everywhere 
evident in Europe, is not evidefit there. Men do not 
lose their self respect, they win it; they do not drop 
out, they work in. This is the great result, not of 
American institutions or ideas, but of American op¬ 
portunities. . . . Often, when I have contem¬ 

plated with dreary disgust, in the outskirts of New 
York, the hideous wooden shanties planted askew in 
wastes of garbage, and remembered Naples or Genoa 
or Venice, suddenly it has been borne in upon me that 
the Italians living there feel that they have their feet 
on the ladder leading to paradise; that for the first 
time they have before them a prospect and a hope; 

. they have gained self-respect, independ¬ 
ence, and the allure of the open horizon. 

“What strikes more often and more directly home 
to me, is the other fact that America, if she is not 
burdened by masses lying below the average, is also 
not inspired by the elite rising above it. Her distinc¬ 
tion is the absence of distinction. No wonder Walt 
Whitman sang the ‘Divine Average.’ There is noth¬ 
ing else in America for him to sing. But he should 
not have called it diving; he should have called it 
‘human, all too human.’ 

“Or is it divine? Divine somehow in its potentiali¬ 
ties? Divine to a deeper vision than mine? I w;as 
writing this at Brooklyn, in a room that looks across 
the East River to New York. And after putting 
down the words, ‘human, all too human,’ I stepped 
out on the terrace. Across the gulf before me went 
shooting forward and back interminable rows of fiery 
shuttles, and on its surface seemed to float blazing 
basilicas. Beyond rose into the darkness a dazzling 
tower of light, dusking and shimmering, primrose and 
green, up to a diadem of gold. About it hung galaxies 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


17 


and constellations, outshining the firmament of stars; 
and all the air was full of strange voices, more than 
human, ingeminating Babylonian oracles out of the 
bosom of night. This is New York. This is what 
the average man has done. . . . This is the 

symbol of his work, so much more than himself, so 
much more than what seems to be itself in the com¬ 
mon light of day. America does not know what she 
is doing, neither do I know, nor any man. But the 
impulse which drives her, so mean and poor in the 
critic’s eye, has perhaps more significance in the eye 
of God.” (G. Lowes Dickinson —The Divine Aver- 
agen 

Law an Essential to Liberty and Equality 

Because liberty must be made consistent with co-operation, 
it must be consistent with law, for not even two men can work 
together or play a game harmoniously and happily until they 
have come to a common understanding about the rules that will 
govern their action. Without rules acceptable to both, the very 
presenee of the one detracts from the liberty of the other. But 
when they are in agreement as to desirable rules of conduct, 
observation of the rules by both becomes the condition of free¬ 
dom. It will be necessary to have rules to make men free—to 
enable men to act and think freely about either joint or com¬ 
peting enterprise.® 

Liberty as Perfectly Adjusted Co-operation 

“What is liberty.^ I have long had an image in 
my mind of what eonstitutes liberty. Suppose that 
I were to build a great piece of powerful machinery, 
and suppose that I should so awkwardly and unskill- 
fully assemble the parts of it that every time one part 
tried to move it would be interfered with by others. 

^Reference Reading: Lapp, “Our Country—The Elements o_f 
Civics'^' Chap. Ill, “Providing for Common Protection”; Chap. 
IV, “The Nature of Government”; Chap. V, “The People and 
the Government of the United I^tates.” 


18 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Liberty for the several parts would consist in the 
best possible assembling and adjustment of them all, 
would it not? That is liberty! You say of the loco¬ 
motive—it runs free. What do you mean? You 
mean that its parts are so assembled and adjusted 
that friction is reduced to the minimum, and that it 
has perfect adjustment. We say of a boat skim¬ 
ming the water with light foot, “How free she runs” 
when we mean, how perfectly she is adjusted to the 
force of the wind, how perfectly she obeys the great 
breath out of the heavens, that fills her sails. Throw 
her head up into the wind and see how she will halt 
and stagger, how every sheet will shiver and her 
whole frame be shaken, how instantly she is “in 
irons,” in the expressive phrase of the sea. She is 
free only when you let her fall off again and have 
recovered once more her nice adj ustment to the forces 
she must obey and cannot defy. 

“Human freedom consists in perfect adjustments of 
human interests and human activities and human en¬ 
ergies.” (Wilson —The New Freedom, p. 282.) 

Law Must be Consistent with Liberty 

In his more formal text books President Wilson puts the 
relation of law to liberty like this: 

“Law is the will of the State concerning the civil 
conduct of those under its authority.” (Wilson —The 
State, Sec. 1415.) 

“A constitutional government is one whose powers 
have been adapted to the interests of the people and 
to the maintenance of individual liberty.” (Wilson— 
Constitutional Government of the United States, p.2.) 

Law is the body of rules of human conduct, enforced by or¬ 
ganized public authorities, with the object of establishing jus¬ 
tice. (cf: F. Pollock, “First Book of Jurisprudence”; Holland, 
“Jurisprudence.”) 

A similar view was held by President Roosevelt: 

“I am emphatically a believer in Constitutional- 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


19 


ism, and because of this fact I no less emphatically 
protest against any theory that would make of the 
Constitution a means of thwarting instead of securing 
I the absolute right of the people to rule themselves. 

* * * Constitutions * * * must be inter¬ 

preted and administered so as to fit human rights.” 
(Theodore Roosevelt— Charter of Democracy/^ 
Address before the Ohio Constitutional Convention, 
1912,y 

The notion that freedom in government rests on common 
understanding and common acceptance of rules of action—that 
this is the reconciliation of liberty and law, runs back through 
many writings. Edmund Burke puts it as follows: 

“If any one asks me what a free government is, I 
reply, it is what the people think so.” 

The Sphere of Liberty 

“The sole end for which mankind are warranted, 
individually or collectively, in interfering with the 
liberty of action of any of their number, is self-pro¬ 
tection. ... 

“. . . there is a sphere of action in which so¬ 

ciety, as distinguislied from the individual, has, if 
any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that 
portion of a person’s life and conduct whicli affects 
only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with 
tlieir free, voluntary and undeceived consent and 
participation. . . . This, then, is the appropriate 

region of human liberty. It comprises, first the in¬ 
ward domain of consciousness; demanding liberty of 
conscience, in the most comprehensive sense; liberty 
of thought and feeling; absolute freedom of opinion 
and sentiment on all subjects, practical or speculative, 
scientific, moral or theological. . . . Secondly, 

the principle requires liberty of tastes and pursuits; 
of framing the plan of our life to suit our own char- 

^ Reference Readhuj: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 114-132. 


20 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


acter; of doing as we like, subject to such conse¬ 
quences as may follow; without impediment from our 
fellow creatures, so long as what we do does not harm 
them even though they should think our conduct fool- | 
ish, perverse or wrong. Thirdly, from this liberty of 
each individual, follows the liberty, within the same 
limits, of combination among individuals; freedom to 
unite, for any purpose not involving harm to others; 
the persons combining being supposed to be of full 
age, and not forced or deceived. 

“No society in which these liberties are not, on 
the whole, respected is free, whatever may be its form 
of government; and none.is completely free in which 
they do not exist absolutely and unqualifiedly. The 
only freedom which deserves the name is that of pur¬ 
suing our own good in our own way so long as we do 
not attempt to deprive others of theirs, or impede 
their efforts to attain it. Each is the proper guardian 
of his own health, whether bodily or mental or spir¬ 
itual. Mankind are greater gainers by suffering each 
other to live as seems good to themselves, than by 
compelling each to, live as seems good to the rest.”^-’ 

(J. S. Mill: On Liberty, Chapter I.) 

What is Democracy? 

“Democracy does not mean merely government by 
the people, or majority rule or universal suffrage. 

All of these political forms or devices are a part of its 
necessary organization; but the chief advantage such 
methods or organization have is their tendency to 
promote some salutary and formative purpose. The 
. really formative purpose is not exclusively a matter 
of individual liberty, though it must give individual 
liberty abundant scope. Neither is it a matter of 
equal rights alone, although it must always cherish 
the social bond which that principle represents. < The 
salutary and formative democratic purpose consists 
in using the democratic organization for the joint 

Additional Reading: Merriam, “American Political Theories” 
pp. 59-63; 308-313. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


21 


benefit of individual distinction and social improve¬ 
ment. 

. Such a democracy would not be dedi¬ 
cated either to liberty or equality in their abstract ex¬ 
pressions, but to liberty and equality, in so far as 
they make for human brotherhood. . . . The 

two subordinate principles, the one representing the 
individual and the other the social interest, can by 
their subordination to the principle of human brother¬ 
hood, be made in the long run mutually helpful.” 
(Herbert Croly, **The Promise of American Life, 
pp. 207-08.) 

The Foundations of American Democracy 

When by conquest, or other methods, one people or asso¬ 
ciated group overcomes another, then government cannot be 
consistent with freedom until after a period of readjustment. 
The dominant class insist on control to maintain the benefits 
of conquest. They claim for themselves opportunities not 
shared by all, and if this is based on assumptions of superior 
right the self interest of the dominant class asserts itself in 
efforts to make those against which such assumption runs con¬ 
tented with their lot. Religion, law, all the forces which bind, 
are used to keep the man in inferior status, a “slave to the 
wheel of labor.” He may be kept in ignorance, as was done in 
Russia and China; or, recognizing his superior service value 
when educated, because men are more productive and effective 
for warfare as well as work when well trained, he may be edu¬ 
cated, and at the same time taught that his greatest advantage 
lies in subservience. Such was German Kultur In either 
case, habits, customs, laws grow up, which express this inequal¬ 
ity, until finally those who resent their inferior status can bear 
it no longer and make an effort to free themselves. 

Men free themselves from institutions in one of two ways: 

Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World WaP’; p. 3. 


22 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


(1) by leaving them behind or (2) by changing them—by emi¬ 
gration or by political action. 

Emigration as a Means of Escape from Autocracy 

Emigration can take place only by consent of the existing 
government. Usually it requires the consent of two govern¬ 
ments—the one from which the emigrant goes and the one to 
which he comes. At times when there were unused lands to 
be occupied and new continents to be settled, the improvement 
of which would bring increased wealth to the beneficiaries of 
the old order, as well as greater freedom to those who sought 
the new, consent has been relatively easy to obtain. 

There are many instances of men freeing themselves from 
existing institutional conditions by migration, which have had 
the effect of changing the currents of human thought and cre¬ 
ating in men new vision. Oglethorpe secured the release of 
persons who had been imprisoned for debt, and with these, and 
other unfortunates, settled the colony of Georgia in 1733. 

James Edward Oglethorpe was “chairman of a committee of 
the House of Commons to visit prisons and propose measures of 
reform. While performing this service, he was struck with 
compassion for the multitude of i^oor debtors, many of whom 
were merely victims of misfortunes, but, according to the 
. . . . laws of that time, were shut up, it might be, for 

the remainder of their lives.” (Fisher, “77/e Colonial Era,” 
]q). 304-5.) 

Here, again, were the same motives which had actuated other 
settlers in the new world. The method was different, but the 

^-Slides: Oglethorpe’s colony of debtors (men who were the victims 
of a system that made them economic slaves) : The Settlement 
of Savannah; James Oglethorpe. The Political Refugees (mi¬ 
gration for political freedom): Botany Bay, New South Wales; 
a Ticket-of-Leave. The Pilgrims: leaving England for Delft; 
embarkation for Plymouth; the Mayflower landing at Plymouth; 
First Sunday in America. William Penn (migration for free¬ 
dom of conscience) ; Penn’s Treaty with the Indians. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


23 


desire for the realization of certain ideals was universal. The 
purpose of immigration of the indentured servants of Virginia 
was to escape from the status in which they had been placed by 
Old World prejudices and inequalities. The Pilgrims left their 
homes to embark on a three months’ voyage to a new and unde¬ 
veloped country^ where hardship^ danger^ and privation 
awaited them. They landed at Plymouth at the beginning of 
winter. What brought the Pilgrims to these unbroken wilds, 
to face such trial and hardship ? It* was the desire to break 
away from the Old World life in which their ambitions were 
thwarted, and to build for themselves a land, the cornerstone of 
which should be “Equal Opportunity for All.’’ 

Revolution as a Means of Effecting Change 

Men are not all willing to leave their homes and friends in 
order to free themselves from economic or institutional slavery; 
or having emigrated they may find that the institutions which 
they sought to get away from follow them. In a democratic 
society, institutions may be changed from time to time by peace¬ 
ful means—simply by vote of the people. But when adjust¬ 
ments cannot be made by peaceful means, or what is worse, 
when laws are passed to fasten existing inequities on men as in 
the case of serfdom, slavery and caste, then the only recourse 
for those who want freedom is to join in a revolt—to organize 
for the purpose of overthrowing existing institutions by vio¬ 
lence. 

Efforts to Prevent Establishment of Autocracy in New 
World 

American colonists had made great sacrifices to get away 
from customs and laws which assigned men before they were 
born to classes from which they could escape either not at all, 
or onlv after great suffering. They had left a social world 
in which one class rested on and became a burden to another. 


24 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The purpose to remain free, to prevent the establishment here 
of old world institutions, was first shown in protests and upris¬ 
ings within the colonies. 

“From the beginning of the settlement of America, 
the frontier regions have exercised a steady influence 
toward democracy. In Virginia, to take an example, 
it can be traced as early as the period of Bacon’s 
Rebellion, a hundred years before our Declaration of 
Independence. The small land holders, seeing that 
their powers were steadily passing into the hands of 
the wealthy planters who controlled Church and State 
and lands, rose in revolt. A generation later, in the 
governorship of Alexander Spotswood, we And a con¬ 
test between the frontier settlers and the property¬ 
holding classes of the coast. The democracy with 
which Spotswood had to struggle and of which he so 
bitterly complained, was a democracy made up of 
small land holders, of the newer immigrants, and of 
indented servants. . . . The ‘War of the Regula¬ 

tion’ just on the eve of the American Revolution shows 
the steady persistence of this struggle.” (Frederick 
J. Turner, Atlantic Monthly, January, 1903.) 

When later the party in power in England which stood for 
monopoly and special privilege sought to use the British army 
and navy to force laws upon the colonies which would make 
them subservient to old world institutions, which would de¬ 
prive them of their rights of self-determination, there followed 
the long struggle that ended in American Independence. This 
is typical. 

America’s Great Struggle for Freedom 

This does not mean that ideals of Democracy were primarily 
American, that Democracy in England was dead, that here the 
underlying sentiment was at all times essentially democratic. 

“American constitutional history . . . does not 

begin with the Declaration of Independence in 1776, 
nor yet with the founding of the first seaboard col- 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


25 


onies more than a century and a half previously. Its 
beginnings go back to the days of the Saxon folk mote 
and the Curia Regis of Norman England. The prin¬ 
ciples of civil liberty as established by Magna Charta, 
the Bill of Rights^ by the Habeas Corpus Acts, and 
by the whole fabric of the Common Law were the 
patrimony of the American colonists from the outset. 

By migrating to America they lost none of the rights 
and liberties which they had possessed at home. They 
did not therefore create anew but brought with them 
the political traditions upon which a free government 
could be set up. The right to a share in the making 
of laws—the right of self-taxation, the right to trial 
by jury, the right of petition, the right of all men to 
be dealt with equally before the law—these rights 
did not originate in America. They ^re the heritage 
of the whole Anglo-Saxon race. The American Revo¬ 
lution preserved them at a time when they were in 
danger of being trodden under foot, and the American 
constitutions, both state and national, merely asserted 
them anew.” (W. B. Munro, **The Government of 
the United States/* p. 2.) 

It is well to remember that the stand of the colonists in the 
events leading up to the American Revolution was upheld by 
prominent public men like Chatham and Edmund Burke, in op¬ 
position to the government of the time. 

Whenever existing institutions remain rigid and refuse to 
accommodate themselves to the spirit that dwells in them, they 
breed revolt. A people which remains passive at such times 
consents to institutional slavery. The American Colonists who 
had gone to such pains to get away from institutions which pro¬ 
tected autocracy, monopoly and special privileges would not 
consent. They remonstrated; they petitioned Parliament; they 
petitioned the King.^^ Then these measures availing nothing 
against the party in power, they organized to resist. 

Slides: The Petition to George III; Portrait George III; The Tea 
Party; The Boston Massacre. Patrick Henry speaking in the 
Virginia House of Burgesses; Chatham, speaking for America. 


26 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The Spirit of 1776 

An interesting side-liglit on the condition of mind in America, 
when the people were beginning to give up hope of institutional 
adjustment, is found in the address of Patrick Henry before 
tlie Virginia Convention of Delegates, March 23, 1775. 

“Mr. President, it is natural to man to indulge in 
the illusion of hope. We are apt to shut our eyes 
against a painful truth, and listen to that siren till 
she transforms us into beasts. Is this the part of 
wise men, engaged in a great and arduous struggle 
for liberty .^ . . . 

“They tell us, sir, that we‘are weak; unable to cope 
with so formidable an adversary. 

“Three million people, armed in the holy cause of 
liberty, and in such a country as that which we 
j)ossess, are invincible by any force which our enemy 
can send against us. . . . 

“Gentlemen may cry peace, peace—but there is no 
peace. 

“Is life so dear or peace so sweet, as to be pur¬ 
chased at the price of chains and slavery.^ Forbid it, 
Almighty God! I know not what course others may 
take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me 
death.”!^ 

One of the most graphic pictures we have of the ideals which 
moved the American colonists to break away from autocratic 
government, and in its essentials true to the spirit of the Revo¬ 
lution, is found in an address of Daniel Webster on the oc¬ 
casion of the deaths of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. 
They had worked together for the Cause of Freedom during 
the period of Revolution. They were opposed to each other dur¬ 
ing the period of reconstruction, for Adams distrusted the ability 
of the masses and thought tliat there sliould be an aristocracy of 

Slides: The Battle of Bunker Hill; Debatinc: the Declaration of 
Independence; John Hancock; John Adams; Benjamin Franklin. 

Reference Reading: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 3-8. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


27 


brains. But be was honest, bold, and ever ready to serve the 
cause of common welfare. In this speech Webster gives an 
imagined speech by a weak and cautious member, followed by 
a speech from Adams to the assembled delegates who were 
there to decide whether the Colonists should declare for Inde¬ 
pendence from English rule: 

“Let us, then, bring before us the assembly, which 
was about to decide a question big with the fate of 
empire. Let us open their door and look in upon 
their deliberations. Let us survey the anxious and 
careworn countenances, let us hear the firm-toned 
voices of this band of patriots. 

“Hancock presided over the solemn sitting; and one 
of those not prepared to pronounce for absolute Inde¬ 
pendence is on the floor, and is urging his reasons for 
dissenting from the Declaration. 

“ ‘Let us pause: This step, once taken, cannot be 
retraced. This resolution once passed, will cut off all 
hope of reconciliation. . . . For ourselves, we 

may be ready to run the hazard; but are we ready to 
carry the country to that length ? Is success so prob¬ 
able as to justify it.^ . . . Can we rely on the 

constancy and perseverence of the people; or will 
they act as the people of other countries have acted, 
and, wearied of a long war, submit, in the end, to 
worse oppression? ... I shudder before this 
responsibility.’ 

“It was for Mr. Adams to reply to arguments like 
these. We know his opinipns and we know his char¬ 
acter. He would commence with his characteristic 
directness and earnestness: 

“ ‘Sink or swim, live or die, survive or perish, I 
give my heart and hand to this vote. . . . Do 

we mean to submit and consent that we ourselves 
shall be ground to powder, and our country and its 
rights trodden down in the dust? I know we do not 
mean to submit. We never shall submit. Do we 
intend to violate that most sacred obligation ever en¬ 
tered into by men, that pligliting before God, of our 


28 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


sacred honor to Washington^ when, putting him forth 
to incur the dangers of War, as well as the political 
hazards of its times, we promised to adhere to him, 
in every extremity, with our fortunes and our lives? 

I know there is not a man here who would not rather 
see a general conflagration sweep over the land, or an 
earthquake sink it, than one jot or tittle of that 
plighted faith fall to the ground. For myself, having 
twelve months ago, in this place, moved you, that 
George Washington be appointed eommander of the 
forces raised, or to be raised, for the defense of 
American liberty, may my right hand forget her cun¬ 
ning and my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, 
if I hesitate or waver in the support I give him. 

“ ‘The war, then must go on. We must fight it 
through. And if the war must go on, why put off 
longer the Declaration of Independence. 

“ ‘If we fail it can be no worse for us. But we 
shall not fail. . . . Sir, the Declaration will in¬ 
spire the people to inereased courage. . . . Read 

this Declaration at the head of the Army. 

Publish it from the pulpit. . . . Send it to the 

publie halls; proclaim it there; let them hear it who 
heard the first roar of the enemy’s cannon; let them 
see it who saw their brothers and sons fall on the 
field of Bunker Hill and in the streets of Lexington 
• and Concord, and the very walls will cry out in its 
support.’ ” (Daniel Webster’s portrayal in an ora¬ 
tion on Adams and Jefferson, 1826.)^® 

Jefferson’s Interpretation 

The best examplification of the spirit of 1776 is found in 
tlie second paragraph of the Deelaration itself as it was drawn 
up by Jefferson, our first great prophet of democracy: 

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all 
men are created equal, that they are endowed by their 
Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among 

Slides: Signing the Declaration of Independence; liberty Bell. 

Reference Readinf/: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 9-14. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


29 


these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. 
That to seeure these rights. Governments are in¬ 
stituted among Men, deriving their just powers from 
the consent of the governed, that whenever any Form 
of Government becomes destructive of these ends, 
it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it, and 
to institute new Government, laying its foundation on 
such principles and organizing its powers in such 
form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their 
Safety and Happiness.”^® 

Thomas Jefferson, in writing of the ideals which the signers 
of this document had in mind, throws some light on the con¬ 
fidence which they had in their ideals: 

“We believed that man was a rational animal, en¬ 
dowed by nature with rights and with an innate sense 
of justice, and that he could be restrained from wrong 
and protected in right by moderate powers confided 
to persons of his own choice and held to their duties 
by dependence on his Own will. . . .We believed 
that men, enjoying in ease and security the fruits of 
their own industry, enlisted hy all their interests on 
the side of law and order, habituated to think for 
themselves, and to follow reason as their guide, would 
be more easily and safely governed than with minds 
nourished in error and vitiated and debased . 
hy ignorance, indigence and oppression.** 

Adams and Hamilton were by instinct aristocrats, but both 
of them were in most hearty accord with the underlying con¬ 
cepts of justice upon which Jefferson’s democracy and all 
democracy is based—the justice which is written in the hearts 
of the people. 

Hamilton’s Interpretation 

“The sacred rights of mankind are not to be 
rummaged for among old parchments or musty 
records. They are written, as with a sunbeam, in tlie 

Slides: Thomas Jefferson; Alexander Hamilton. 


30 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


whole volume of human nature, by the hand of the 
Divinity itself, and can never be erased or obscured 
by mortal power.” (Hamilton, “The Farmer Re¬ 
futed,” 1775; Lodge Edition, Works—Vol. I.) 

The Old World Fight for Freedom 

This idea of justice is the idea which finally prevails, and 
unless institutions take it into account they are on uncertain 
ground. Institutions and vested rights which are founded on 
injustice cannot outlast the dominance of the autocracy which 
has brought them into being.^^ 

The Attack on the Bastille as the Symbol of Absolutism 

“The fall of the Bastille was something more than 
the fall of a disused but hated prison. [It was] 
something more than a passing delirium. 

And if one will read the memoirs of the time he will 
find all Europe celebrating the event—Englishmen 
orating, Russians hugging one another, Germans 
weeping for joy. The explanation of all this en¬ 
thusiasm lies in this: the fall of the Bastille was the 
symbol of the fall of Bourbon absolutism, the sign of 
the rise of the nation.” (Shailer Mathews, “The 
French Revolution,” p. 134.) 

Attack Upon the Feudal Militaristic State 

“The Revolution . . . was upon the relics of 

feudalism, not upon the state.” (Ibid., p. 140.) 

“But in the events at Versailles, the attack is upon 
the state, in the person of the King. The mob re¬ 
quired the King to return with them to Paris, where 
he was lodged in the Tuileries. At last the capital 
had the King ... in its own control: It was the 
guarantee that the old regime should not be restored.” 
(Ibid., p. 149.)i« 

^’’Slides: The Bastille; Storming the Bastille; The Fall of the 
Bastille; March on Versailles. 

^^Slides: Louis XVI and family; Roget de L’lsle and the Mar¬ 
seillaise; Mob returning from Versailles with the King; Louis 
XVI going to the guillotine. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


31 


Europe^s Tribute to America 

Bartholdi’s gifU® now has a new and fuller meaning to us 
than it had when he, through the French government, offered 
this statue to America. Louis Kossuth has helped us to inter¬ 
pret what is in the hearts of men today.When the Hun¬ 
garian patriot was driven into exile by Austria, he retired to 
Asia Minor, whence he was invited to come to America as the 
guest of our government. At a reception given in New York 
he left us this: 

“Conscious of no personal merit, I came to your 
shores a poor persecuted exile, but you poured upon 
me the triumph of a welcome such as the world has 
never yet seen, and why.^ Because you took me for 
the representative of that principle of liberty which 
God has destined to be the common benefit of hu¬ 
manity.” (Kossuth to the Corporation of N. Y. 
1851.) 

America’s Response 

His visit called forth from Seward, who was a rival of 
Lincoln for the nomination for the presidency, and became one 
of Lincoln’s cabinet, this interpretation of America’s duty to 
humanity, as well as to herself: 

“In the course of human events we see the nations 
of Europe struggling to throw off their despotic sys¬ 
tems of government, and to establish governments 
upon the principle of republicanism or of constitu¬ 
tional monarchy. Whenever such efforts are made 
we see it invariably happen that the existing despot¬ 
isms of Europe combine to repress those struggles— 
combine to subdue the people. The consequence is, 
that despotism is a common cause, and it results also 
that the cause of constitutional liberty has also be¬ 
come one common cause —the cause of mankind 
against despotism. (W. H. Seward, in the Senate, 

Dec. 9, 1851.) 

Slide: Bartholdi’s Statue of “Liberty Enlightening the World.” 

^Louis Kossuth; Lafayette. 


32 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Sixty-six years later, the American nation was called to arms 
to fight the battle of democracy against the same forces which 
had driven Kossuth 'from his home and called forth the state¬ 
ment of America’s duty by Seward. The same thought is 
expressed in President Wilson’s address to Congress, asking it 
to declare war. 

“The right is more precious than peace, and we 
shall fight for the things which we have always 
carried nearest our hearts. . . . To such a task 

we can dedicate our lives and our fortunes, every¬ 
thing that we are and everything that we have, with 
the pride of those who know that the day has come 
when America is privileged to spend her blood and 
her might for the principles that gave her birth and 
happiness and the principles which she has treasured. 

. . .” (Address to Congress, April 2, 1917, ask¬ 

ing it to declare war on the Imperial German 
Government. 

Quite as significant for our present purpose is the proclama¬ 
tion of the PresideAt calling the people to arms: 

“Whereas Congress has enacted and the President 
has, on the eighteenth day of May, one thousand nine 
hundred and seventeen, approved a law which con¬ 
tains the following provisions: 

“ ‘Section 5. That all male persons between the 
ages of twenty-one and thirty, both inclusive, shall be 
subject to registration in accordance with regulations 
to be prescribed by the President, etc.’ 

“Now therefore, I, Woodrow Wilson, do call upon 
. . . (etc.). 

“The significance of this cannot be overestimated. 

It is a new manner of accepting and vitalizing our 

-^Slides: “The Home of the Free” (Idealized picture of home life 
under conditions of economic and political freedom). Work¬ 
man at dinner; mother and babe. President Wilson before 
Congress, April 2, 1917. 

Reference Rending: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 175-177; 242-253. 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


33 


duty to give ourselves with thoughtful devotion to the 
common purpose of us all. It is in no sense a con¬ 
scription of the unwilling; it is, rather, selection from 
the nation which volunteered in mass. . . . 

.“The day here named is the time upon which all 
shall present themselves for assignment to their 
tasks.” (Proclamation of President Wilson May 18, 
1917.) 

Never before in American history were the people so 
thoroughly in accord in any enterprise undertaken by the 
government. And American spirit not alone laid the founda¬ 
tion for our political action but was the largest single force 
in bringing the allies together under a united command.^^ 

The War for World Democracy 

Kipling has made the common ideals and purposes which 
lay the foundation for unity of action in organizing for and 
waging the great war, the subject of one of his most effective 
poems: 

“We were dreamers, dreaming greatly, in the man- 
stifled town. 

We yearned beyond the sky-line where the strange 
roads go down. 

Came the Whisper, came the Vision, came the Power 
with the Need, 

Till the Soul that is not man’s soul was lent to us to 
lead. 

As the deer breaks—as the steer breaks—from the 
herd where they graze. 

In the faith of little children we went on our ways. 

Then the wood failed—then the food failed—then the 
last water dried. 

In the faith of little children we lay down and died. 

"^Slides: The Land of the Brave—A scene of an American family 
reading the President’s Message of April 2, 1917; Reading the 
Call for Assignment to Duty; leaving home to join the army— 
to “help make the world safe for democracy”; volunteers 
marching to be mustered in; “the supreme sacrifice.” 


31 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


On the sand-drift—on the veld-side—in the fern- 
scriib we lay 

That our sons might follow after by the bones on the 
way, 

Follow after—follow after! We have watered the 
root, 

And the bud has come to bloom that ripens for fruit 1 
Follow after—we are waiting by the trail -we lost 
For the sound of many footsteps, for the tread of a 
host. 

Follow after—follow after—for the harvest is sown; 

By the bones about the wayside ye shall come to your 
own!” 

(Rudyard Kipling—Song of the English) 

Senator Root’s statement of the value of ideals, made be¬ 
fore the war, is also of special interest to us: 

“It is worth while to be a citizen of a great country, 
but size alone is not enough to make a country great. 

A country must be great in its ideals; it must be 
great-hearted; it must be noble; it must despise and 
reject all smallness and meanness; it must be faith¬ 
ful to its word; it must keep the faith of its treaties; 
it must be faithful to its mission of civilization in 
order that it shall be truly great. It is because we 
believe that of our country that we are proud, aye, 
that the alien with the first step of his foot upon our 
soil is proud, to be a part of this great democ¬ 
racy. . . . 

“Although we must admit that the United States 
has not always been true to her ideals, the great fact 
remains that the world holds us to our obligations; 
and'it behooves each and every citizen to throw his 
energy into the upbuilding of the nation so that it 
shall be faithful to its mission to civilization.” (Elihu 
Root; speech in the U. S. Senate, Jan. 21, 1913, on 
the Panama Canal Tolls.) 

The Good Will of Mankind 

Public o*pinion—the consciousness of the group, the will of 


THE IMPULSE TO CO-OPERATE 


35 


the people who make up a community or nation to make real 
the ideals for which they are living and are ready to die, ideals 
which are broader than individual want and which therefore 
are above selfishness—this is the spirit of which the State is 
the body. It is the dominance of this spirit, the public con¬ 
science and the passion of the people for justice which de¬ 
mands equality of opportunity, the “square deal,” that dis¬ 
tinguishes democracy from autocracy. This spirit expresses 
itself institutionally in and through government based on the 
consent of the governed. 

When men and women of a nation are ready to make the 
supreme sacrifice to support their government in the cause 
of humanity, when the men and women of a nation are ready 
to respond to an appeal not more personal or selfish than such 
as was made by the President on May 18, 1917, asking the 
nation to mobilize for war, and to this end every man be¬ 
tween twenty-one and thirty to register for any service, to 
which he may be assigned, having regard for his fitness, then 
the practical questions for citizenship relate to organization, to 
leadership and to control over leadership —to the practical, 
physical, organic necessities for team-work, to the means of ac¬ 
complishing ends desired and of making and keeping the 
government as the organ of such a society, the servant and not 
the master of the popular will. 


36 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Reference Readings: Cleveland and Shafer, “Democracy in Re¬ 
construction”; II, “The Ideals of Democracy as Interpreted by 
President Wilson”; III, “The Underlying Concepts of 
Democracy.” 

W. B. Guitteau, ^‘Preparing for Citizenship’’; Chap. XIX, 
“Our National Ideals.” 

A. W. Dunn, “Team-Work Through Government.” 

Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and the World 
War”; Chap. I, “National Ideals and Government.” 

Additional Readings: A. B. Hart, “National Ideals”; Chap. XIX, 
“The Assurance of American Democracy.” For a treatment 
of colonial and revolutionary ideals, see pp. 68-74, of the same 
work, and also ' Merriam, “American Political Theories”; 
Chaps. I-II. 

Croly, “The Promise of American Life”; Chap. VII, Part 
IV, “The Bridge Between Democracy and Nationality”; Chap. 
IX, Part I, “The American Democracy and Its National 
Principle.” 

Beard, “American Government and Politics”; Chap. VI, “The 
Evolution of Political Issues in the United States.” 


II 


ORGANIZATION—AN ESSENTIAL TO 
CO-OPERATION 

‘^For the strength of the Pack is the Wolf, 

And the strength of the Wolf is the Pack** 

The Interdependence of Mankind 

The story of Robinson Crusoe will never lose its hold. 
After two hundred years it is still read and re-read by millions, 
and what holds us is not so much the story itself as it is the 
picture of the man. Crusoe is stamped indelibly on our minds 
as one who is suddenly cut off from his fellows, suffering want, 
facing dangers, enduring hardships, not because nature is 
unkind, as in the case of the Pilgrim Fathers, but because he is 
alone. As often as the picture comes before us we are made 
to realize how little we are to ourselves—how much we owe 
to our fellows. Even after Crusoe had been cast ashore he was 
reminded of the fact that he was not entirely without the 
benefits of community life. If he had been, there would have 
been but a short story for Daniel Defoe to tell; Crusoe could 
not have lived long. When he found himself the only human 
being who had survived the storm from the wreckage, he was 
able to salvage food, clothing, shelter, tools, a gun and a dog. 
It was only because of these things, all products of past co¬ 
operation, that life was endurable.^ 

Defoe gives us the negative of the picture; from Dean 
Jonathan Swift we get the positive. In Gulliver’s Travels, 
»Swift tells of a people so small that five or six of them could 

^Reference Reading: A. W. Dunn, “The Community and the 
Citizen’*; Chap. II, “What is a Community?” 


38 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


dance on the palm of Gulliver’s hand. But by working together 
they succeeded in securely tying Gulliver—tying him hand and 
foot and even staking down the hairs of his head so that he 
could not move. 

From the story of the Garden of Eden^ we read: 

“God created man in His own image, in the image 
of God created He him; male and female created He 
them. And God blessed them; and God said unto 
them: Be fruitful and multiply, and replenish the 
earth, and subdue it.” 

Individual Liberty and Opportunity through Mutual 
Service 

Man has literally obeyed this injunction but he has done it 
not by each standing alone relying on his own strength and 
cunning. He has done it by co-operation, which is another way 
of saying that each serves himself best by serving others. 
Individually, man is a slave to nature, but a group working 
together masters nature and makes it the slave to all. Even 
the sun is harnessed to man’s machines to do his bidding—the 
heat energy in the chemistry of the plant cell, wind, wave, 
tide, flood, lightning, the forces that move and hold the 
spheres, all are made to do man’s work under his guiding hand. 
The Great Northern Lakes are turned into a mill pond, moun¬ 
tains are moved, continents are divided. It is found to be to 
the advantage of individuals to combine, not alone to do great 
things but small things as well. It has been, said that, as we 
work today, we utilize the co-operation of not less than a 
million men to make a needle. But this is only one of the 
many products of the many co-operating groups who have had 
something to do directly or indirectly with making the needle— 
all of which are made better and more cheaply than would be 
if one or a few persons worked alone.^ 

'^Reference Reading: A. W. Dunn, “The Commimity and the 
Citizen'*; Chap. XI, “The Relation between the Community and 
the Citizen in Business Life.” 


AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 


39 


The advantage to be aeliieved by co-operation is limited only 
by the abilities of men to organize. The history of mankind 
has been the history of one or another form of organization, 
or association of organizations, for team work—the relative 
advantage of these forms being tested from time to time by war 
and commercial competititon.^ 

Limitations of “The Simple Life” 

Country life today, while it still moves in a much narrower 
circle than life in the great city, is far different from what it 
was a hundred years ago. The ancestral home of the Fair¬ 
banks family that still stands at Dedham, Mass, (the family 
of which Vice-President Fairbanks was an honored member), 
has been preserved with all its rude appointments and trap¬ 
pings. The Winslow House is another ancestral home which 
enables us to see how the grandchildren of one of the two 
Winslow brothers who came to New England in the Mayflower 
lived. Here is preserved the spinning wheel, the flax brake, 
the wool card, and the other rude instruments which made up 
the tools of family production. There were a few common serv¬ 
ices, typified by The “Old Mill” and the “Village Blacksmith.” 
How far w'e have departed from this primitive state of co-opera¬ 
tion, few have stopped to think.^ 

^Slides: The Fairbanks’ House—Dedham, Massachusetts. The 
Winslow House. “The Home of my Father, the Dairy House 
Nigh It”; Pioneer home; Log Cabin; The Old Spinning Wheel; 
Hand loom; Spinning Rook; “The Mill”; Primitive method of 
Grinding Meal; Ancient method of Threshing—Mexico; Cut¬ 
ting Wheat with Sickle and Cradle; Wooden Plow; Plowing 
in Russia; “The Village Blacksmith.” 

* Slides: Modern Economic Co-operation. The modern farm; a 
Kansas wheat field; tractors at work, with plow, harvester and 
binder; gang plowing, sowing, harvesting. Threshing; small 
co-operative elevators; large concrete elevators. Railroad 
yards; railroad shops. Pillsbiiry Mills. Where “Mother’s 
Bread” is made; a modern bakery. The Orchard—40,000 
apple trees; general view; spraying; picking; loading cars; 
the evaporator and by-products, “Cider” Mill. Raising sugar 


40 ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 

Liberty Enlarged Through Widening Co-operative 
Opportunity For Service 

The simplest breakfast of a New Jersey duek-farmer, in¬ 
stead of being taken from his own fields and garden or drawn 
from a well-stored granary, cellar, and root-house, in which 
he has laid by the winter supply, is the product of a com¬ 
munity-service that spans half the globe. 

An Orange from Porto Rico, 

Bananas from Nicaragua, 

An Apple from Oregon, 

Cereal from Michigan, 

Butter and cream from a neighbor. 

Coffee from Brazil, 

Sugar from Hawaii, 

Potatoes from Maine, 

Biscuit made from flour from Montana, 

Bacon from Illinois, 

Eggs from New York, 

Salt from Utah, 

Pepper from East India. 

This is not overdrawn. It is fairly typical. Luncheon and 
dinner widen the range: 


cane; cutting sugar cane; loading sugar at the plantation; sugar 
on West Indies dock; the great refinery. The modern spinning 
wheel; the modern spinning room; spinning cotton yarn; cotton 
on levee, New Orleans. . A great woolen mill; bales of wool; 
washing wool; sorting wool after washing; carding room; spin¬ 
ning (the mule room); doubling room; the weaving room in a 
silk mill. The modern smithy: The great steel mill; plant of 
blast furnace; steel furnace, Birmingham, Ala.; the crucibles; 
casting ingots; rolling shapes; the trip hammer. A modern 
crossroads: Brooklyn Bridge Terminal (showing four levels). 
Going to market: A ferry crossing North River with New York 
in the foreground. An American farmer and his wife at break¬ 
fast. 

Reference Readinf): Beard, “American Citizenship”; Chap. II, 
“Food, Clothing and Shelter.” 



AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 41 

A roast from Argentina^ 

Lettuce from Florida^ 

Olive oil from Italy, 

Marmalade from California, 

Cocoa from Africa, 

Etc., Etc. 

As we go from dining room to living room, from living room 
to bedroom and wardrobe, in the simplest home which has the. 
ordinary comforts of life, we are impressed by the fact that 
the world has undergone a great change—one which has linked 
up the highways and byways made by mankind, made by the 
co-operation which runs back through past centuries so that 
they all lead to the cotter’s door. 

“The farmer harvests his grain and fattens his 
cattle, not as formerly, with reference to the wants of 
his own home community, but for markets thousands 
of miles away; the manufacturer operates his mills 
and his factories to meet the needs of far-distant con¬ 
sumers; the merchant has his customers in many 
states; all—the farmer, the manufacturer, the mer¬ 
chant, the laborer—look for the supplies of their food 
and clothing, not to the resources of the home farm 
or village, but to the resources of the whole con¬ 
tinent. . . . (Senator Elihu Root, speech before 

the Pennsylvania Society at New York, December 

12, 1906.) 

Democratic Co-operation—Freedom of CJioice 

The interesting fact about this rapidly extending, economic 
co-operation developed under a democratic regime is that it is 
voluntary. No one is forced into it but does it from choice; the 
choice as to what part each shall take is made by each man when 
lie chooses an occupation and when he enters into a contract 
for service. In fact this is the chief significance of “freedom” 
—the right to self-determination. Under old conditions of 
slavery he had no choice that he could make. Serfdom held 


42 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


men to their masters. Villeinage fixed men to the soil. As 
industry and art become more highly specialized, with equality 
of opportunity, men become more free, economic and social de¬ 
velopment gives an ever-widening “freedom” to choose. 

Specialization a Means of Enlarging Opportunity 

To the individual, organization and specialization mean 
opportunity to choose a service that the individual likes or 
has special aptitude for—a better chance for each to realize 
the dreams of L’Envoi. ^To society this spirit of democracy 
means more of the things which make for welfare and the 
happiness of all—provided the organized agencies of society 
are suited to their purpose. But for society to provide a 
means of achieving an end through co-operation, each man 
must “do his bit.” A great co-operating society may be 
worked out on the basis of individualism expressing itself in 
offer and acceptance, exchange of goods and services, so long 
as opportunity remains equal. But when opportunity is not 
equal—on account of control over any of the materials which 
enter into production, or control over prices or transporta¬ 
tion facilities, or any other cause—^then co-operation on the 
basis of individual freedom of contract in exchange is no 
longer consistent with liberty and justice. 

The Choice of a Vocation—Its Relation to Liberty and 
Service 

Vocation is usually thought of in terms of making a living. 
Making a living, to the individual and to society, of course, is 
a main consideration. But a living, the satisfaction of in¬ 
dividual wants, is made possible only because of another fact 
—service. Service and wages, or other returns for service 
rendered, are complementary relations. In choosing a voca¬ 
tion, one is really deciding what kind of services he will pre¬ 
pare himself for rendering to society; and in doing this, one 


AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 


43 


may be guided by the rewards or returns which may be ex¬ 
pected—or one may be guided entirely by his regard for 
others. One may choose to render personal service like 
cutting hair, driving an automobile, giving legal or other pro¬ 
fessional advice; one may choose merchandising—the pur¬ 
chasing, transporting and storing of goods produced in distant 
parts and making them available to persons in a particular 
locality; one may choose extractive industry—taking from 
nature that which may be used for food or materials of pro¬ 
duction ; one may choose to combine materials and labor in 
manufacturing process. But whatever the choice, it is a choice 
between opportunities for service to be rendered, in an existing 
plan or scheme of co-operation that has become established, in 
which each may best serve himself by helping to provide for 
all. So that training for making a living is primarily a 
matter of training in liberty to be achieved through voluntary 
co-operation—training in team-work so that each may take a 
part which he is fitted for and happy in while working out the 
great drama of human life,^ 

Education as Training in Liberty as Well as Co-operation 

All the 'games of childhood days, and all the time spent in 
education are to fit men to co-operate—to work together toward 
a goal which is the satisfaction of their own wants and those 
dependent upon them, by helping others—rendering service. 
Education is of two kinds—general and speeial. General edu¬ 
cation develops the faculties of apperception and reasoning 
with a view to giving each man an equal opportunity. Special 
training aims to fit each man to take a part in the great game 
of life.® 

A football game; manual training; motion study,—“Learn¬ 
ing how” (a motion picture slowed down to show technique). 

Slides: State Universities—Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Ohio, 
Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana. 

Endowed Institutions—Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Princeton, 
Pennsylvania, Carnegie, Chicago. 


44 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


“In one field the state would seem at first sight to 
usurp the family function, the field, namely, of edu¬ 
cation. But such is not in reality the case. Educa¬ 
tion is the proper office of the state for two reasons. 

. . . Popular education is necessary for the 

preservation of those conditions of freedom, political 
and social, which are indispensable to free individual 
, development. And in the second place, no instru¬ 
mentality less universal in its power and authority 
than the government can secure popular education.” 
(Wilson, The State, Sec. 1534.) 

“If democracy has any valuable and ultimate 
meaning, it is equality of opportunity in education. 

If to any child this is denied, and it is permitted to 
grow to manhood or womanhood without that edu¬ 
cation which prepares it for good living . . . 

then there is nothing which individual or society can 
do, nothing which man or God can do, to make good 
the loss.” (Philander P. Claxton, U. S. Commissioner 
of Education.) 

Training in Obedience as Training in Liberty 

As co-operation is necessary to ensure freedom, so is law— 
for without law there can be no freedom to choose our way; in 
fact, there would be no way to choose. If there were no rules 
governing the game of football there would be no parts to play 
and no choice to be made. As has been said before, without 
rules governing the great voluntary society in which we live 
and have our being, there could be no co-operation and no 
vocations or specialized services to be rendered. While co¬ 
operation is necessary to human welfare, law is as necessary 
to freedom as it is to autocracy. 

“Now this is the Law of the Jungle—as old and as 
true as the sky; 

And the Wolf that shall keep it may prosper, but the 
Wolf that shall break it must die. 

* * * * 


AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 


45 


“Now these are the Laws of the Jungle, and many 
and mighty are they; 

But the head and the hoof of the Law and the haunch 
and the hump is—Obey!” 

(Rudyarc^ Kipling—The Law of the Jungle.) 

For this reason the Pilgrims, when they found that they 
had missed their course and were about to land on an un¬ 
inhabited shore, before they left the Mayflower entered into 
a compact by which they established a government.’^ The 
difference between autocracy and democracy is not the presence 
or absence of law but the source from which the law comes. The 
law of democracy is the will of a majority. In a settled so¬ 
ciety in which the rules come to be largely a matter of custom, 
law is little more than good manners, but whether customs, 
or rules enacted to meet new or changed conditions, the law 
must be enforced to make men free to choose and act with 
intelligence; hence government, in the exercise of some of 
whose functions co-operation may be made involuntary. 

The Highest Achievement Open to All 

To the individual another interesting thing about a scheme 
of broad, voluntary co-operation is this: that because there are 
so many parts to be played, (as many as there are different 
kinds of specialized services to be rendered) each man has a 
chance to become a master, not alone of himself, but of all the 
forces and conditions which make for the highest success of 
his specialization; or, as has been said, every man has an 
opportunity to become the world’s greatest authority or most 
skilled artisan in a specialization by marking out for himself 
a narrower field than has been covered by any one else, thereby 
enabling him to do his work better—render better- service. 

Slide: Cabin scene on Mayflower—signing the Compact. 

Additional Reading: Merriam, “American Political Theories”; 

pp. 16-18. 


46 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


To one who has a living to make it is only a question whether 
there is enough of that particular kind of service sought for, 
and whether the individuals or society served offer enough 
support to meet the needs of the specialist. It frequently 
happens that there is no demand for a new and highly useful 
service—and recognizing its human usefulness, anticipating 
a demand after this fact has become known, a private indi¬ 
vidual of means, or a private society, or the government, will 
furnish the support. This has been especially true of a lot of 
highly specialized research services, the value of which were 
later recognized by society and the rendering of which have 
made a new art or profession. Thus the range of opportunity 
is constantly widening when men are free,—free to choose 
their way of helping others, free to choose their respective 
callings. 

Slavery, serfdom, villeinage, peonage, are forms of co-opera¬ 
tion under autocratic governments; and laws are the rules for 
enforcing involuntary co-operation. Under an autocracy, 
freedom of choice is denied or much restricted—the claim 
being argued that the over-lord can choose better. The under- 
lying principle of democracy is freedom of choice. Instead 
of co-operation and laws under a democracy making men 
slaves, they make men free. 

Organizing a Free Nation 

The democratic ideal of law is that it is the will of those who 
are governed by it—the rules of the game which give greatest 
freedom. The democratic ideal of the state is that it is the 
body which accommodates itself to the spirit or soul of the 
people.? 

^Slides: Signing the Constitution of the United States; Convention 
of 1787; Text of Preamble; Franklin speaking before the 
Convention. 


AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 


47 


“To organize democracy, we must organize its 
soul, and give it power to create its own ideals.” 
(Edwin A. Alderman—“Can Democracy be Organ¬ 
ized?”)® 

Having created its own ideals, in individual and nation, 
then these ideals must be put in such terms that they will not 
be sacrificed or interfered with, and as men go their several 
ways in the achievement of desired ends that they will not 
interfere with each other. Hence the writing down of certain 
order in terms of law. 

Disorganization Not Freedom 

A mob is an unorganized group moved by impulse to ac¬ 
complish a common purpose.^® The most convincing evidence 
which we have of the added power which comes through organ¬ 
ization is found in the handling of mobs. A few men organized 
can hold back and control many times their number unorgan¬ 
ized. As was written by Kipling, speaking of organization 
to accomplish a national purpose in war: 

“It ain’t the guns or the armament . . . but 

the everlasting team work of every bloomin’ soul.” 

This was the thought in the mind of President Wilson, as 
he appealed to the people in the Proclamation making effective 
the Selective Draft: 

“The whole nation must be a team in which each 
man shall play the part for which he is best fitted. 

To this end. Congress has provided that the nation 
shall be organized for war by selection and that each 
man shall be classified for service in the place to 
which it shall best serve the general good to call 
him.” 

^Reference Reading: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 158-174. 

Slides: The Mob; the Bread Riot in Paris; the Chicago Fire; A 
Fire; Engine turning out; Truck turning out; hook and ladder 
turning out; fire run on Broadway; taking in hose. The Round¬ 
up. Films: Fire-Fighting; Traffic Regulation. 


48 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Before a free nation can be organized it must see the ad¬ 
vantage and the need. This may come about suddenly in the 
case of threatened invasion or usurpation. But with con¬ 
flicting interests between groups organized for the economic 
advantage of numbers, it may take many years and finally have 
to be settled in civil war—to break down the alliances which 
have set themselves up in defiance of the will of a majority. 
It was this kind of a struggle that our nation Went through 
during the first eighty years after Independence, that gave rise 
to great appeals to nationality, as those of Webster and Lincoln. 
The underlying, economic principle of the “Union Cause” was 
the common advantages to be gained through co-operation. 
The underlying organic principle was that laid down by Jef¬ 
ferson—one which since has come to be recognized as of 
supreme importance—acceptance of the decision of a ma¬ 
jority. In a Federal Government the first is necessary’to 
Union; the second is necessary to democratic cpntrol; and of 
the two the second is the more important since economic unity 
depends on the laws governing co-operation. 

Liberty Through Union 

It was many years before we as a nation accepted these 
principles and in the controversy some of the strongest men 
took sides. During the debates in Congress on the subject, 
Mr. Hayne of South Carolina spoke to the theme “Liberty 
First, Union Afterward.” It was in fact an appeal in support 
of economic institutions based on slavery, and the majority of 
the nation was against slavery. Webster urged that liberty 
could come only through union. The spirit of his appeal is 
found in the peroration of his reply to Hayne. 

“I have not allowed myself. Sir, to look beyond the 
Union, to see what might lie hidden in the dark re¬ 
cesses behind. I have not coolly weighed the chances 


AN ESSENTIAL TO CO-OPERATION 


49 


of preserving liberty when the bonds that bind us to¬ 
gether shall be broken asunder. 

“While the Union lasts we have high, exciting, 
gratifying prospects spread out before us, for us and 
our children. Beyond that I seek not to penetrate 
the veil. God grant that in my day, at least, that 
curtain may not rise! God grant that on my vision 
never may be opened what lies behind! When my 
eyes shall be turned to behold for the last time the 
sun in heaven, may I not see him shining on the 
broken and dishonored fragment of a once glorious 
Union—on states dissevered, discordant, belligerent; 
on a land rent with civil feuds, or drenched, it may 
be, in fraternal blood! Let their last feeble and 
lingering glance rather behold the gorgeous ensign of 
the Republic, now known and honored throughout the 
earth, still full high advanced, its arms and trophies 
streaming in their original lustre, not a stripe Erased 
or polluted, not a single star obscured, bearing for its 
motto no such miserable interrogation as “What is all 
this Worth?” nor those other words of delusion and 
folly, “Liberty first and Union afterward,” but 
everywhere, spread all over in characters of living 
light, blazing on all its ample folds, as they float over 
the sea and over the land, and in every wind under 
the whole heavens, that other sentiment, dear to 
every true American heart—“Liberty and Union, now^ 
and forever, one and inseparable!” (Daniel 
Webster’s reply to Hayne,^^ January 26, 1830.) 

Results of Organization and Training as seen in War 

While it is through co-operation that both union and political 
freedom is attained, this fact must also be kept in mind, that 
co-operation is made possible only through organization, and 
that leadership is an essential to organization.^^ 

Reference Beading: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 17-26. 

Slides: The Phalanx; The Battle of Balaklava; Charles Martel 
at Tours; Charge of the Old Guard; Charge of the Scots Greys 
at Waterloo; The Mobile Army; Picket’s Charge; Sheridan’s 
ride. 


50 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The effectiveness of organization and of leadership is 
brought to a practical test in conflict/^ 


Films: Animated Diagrams: The Fight for Dead Man’s Flill; 
The Stand of the Canadians at Ypres. 

Reference Readings: W. B. Guitteau, “Preparing for Citizenship^’; 
Chap. XIII, “The Constitution of the United States.” 

James Bryce, “The American Commonwealth” (abridged 
edition) ; Chap. II, “The Origin of the Constitution.” 

A. W. Dunn, “The Community and the Citizen”; Chap. XIX, 
“How the Citizens of a Community Govern Themselves”; pp. 
161-167; for a more detailed treatment of rural, city, state and 
national governments, see Chaps. XXI-XXIV. 

Cleveland and Shafer, “Democracy in Reconstruction”; VII, 
“Democratization of Institutions for Public Service”; XXIII, 
“The%Evolution of Democracy: A Summary.” 

Ogg and Beard, “National Government and the World War”; 
Chap. VII, “Our Democracy: Privileges and Duties of Citizen¬ 
ship.” 

Lapp, ‘‘Our America—The Elements of Civics”; Chap. XVI, 
“Civil Service”; Chaps. XVIII-XIX, .on Law Making’. 

Beard, “American Citizenship”; Chap. I, “The Nature of 
Modern Government; Chap. VIII, “The National Government”; 
See Chaps. IX-XI, on State and Local Government. 

Beard, “American Government and Politics”; Chap. Ill, 
“The Establishment of the Federal Constitution.” 

Additional Readings: Zueblin, “American Municipal Progress”; 
Chap. XIX, “Municipal Administration.” 

A. L. Lowell, “The Government of England,” Vol. I, “In¬ 
troductory Note on the Constitution”; Chap. VII, “The Per¬ 
manent Civil Service.” 


Ill 


LEADERSHIP—A NECESSITY IN CO-OPERATION 

‘^The Moulder of Events and the 
Great Creator of Public Opinion.’* 

Organization Requires Leadership 

As has been said. Law is essential to co-operation. But this 
is not the only essential. Because group action can be made 
effective only through organization, for any group action which 
does not rest on habit or custom there must be leadership. Lead¬ 
ership comes even before law, for with leadership the necessary 
rules and changes in rules needed to enable a group to make 
the most of its surroundings—its opportunities as seen by the 
most able of them—are forthcoming. 

Organization means the disposition of individuals in such 
manner that each may do his part.^ 

In certain forms of co-operation the addition of more indi¬ 
viduals is simply the addition of more similar parts. This is 
the case in organization for a tug of war. Assuming that each 
man may be able to pull a maximum of 500 pounds, then by 
combining the strength of ten men there would be a maximum 
of 5,000 pounds to be exerted. But even in this case, or in the 
case of a “double-header” freight-train, leadership is necessary. 
It is necessary, if for no other reason, because some one must 
give the signal when each and all are to pull. Team-work must 
be timed; each must pull at exactly the same second or fraction 
of a second. When opposed to another team, as in the case of 

^Slides: Tug of War. The Galley; Interior of Roman Galley; Sea 
Fight between Galleys. 


52 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


a tug of war, it comes to be a matter of generalship when each 
man in a team is to take a position to “hold/’ and when to 
exert extraordinary effort to put the opposing team to a disad¬ 
vantage. But before a contest when team will be pitted 
against team, there must be a long period of drill in team-work 
so that evei;y fibre of each man and every ounce of power which 
each and all can develop and apply to the task,, may be respon¬ 
sive to the word of comihand. 

Where the Element of Free-Will is Absent 

It is only where there is no element of individual free-will, 
where co-operation comes to be a matter entirely of instinct or 
habit, or involuntary group reaction, as in certain of the lower 
forms of gregarious life, that leadership is not needed. This is 
found in the “hair snake” for example, where a horse hair hav¬ 
ing fallen into a stagnant pool becomes the lodging place of a 
certain type of animalculae; these together as a colony making 
up a slimy coat or covering on the hair, the members of the 
colony by instinctive impulse co-operate to make the hair move 
along the surface of the water like a snake. Thus the colony is 
taken to a new feeding place or to a more quiet nook. 

Leadership Necessary Where There is Individual Choice 

But even bees, ants and wdld dogs have leaders as a means 
of better adjusting themselves to the conditions of life. The 
strongest bull is the “king of the herd.” The strongest bull ape 
is the leader of his ape colony. Wherever there is volition or 
individual choice to turn this way or that or do this thing or 
that, the choice of the individual can be harmonized in the 
group only through leadership. 

Elements of Advantage to Be Conserved Through Lead¬ 
ership 

In the case of the “tug of war,” each man added is just 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


53 


another unit of power—i. e.^ eaeli man is a complete power unit 
in himself. Here, as has been said, leadership is found to be 
necessary to success. So, too, in the boat-race each man is a 
power unit in himself. But in the boat-race a new element is 
injected calling for leadership—one not present in the tug-of- 
war. Each man at a particular moment must exercise just so 
much strength and in just such cadence as is called for by the 
coxswain. The same is true of a team of horses. If one horse 
is stronger than the other then the “evener” is adjusted to give 
the stronger horse the “short end of the stick.” But if one 
pulls ahead of the other it throws the latter out of balance so 
that he cannot become effective till he gets a new footing, and 
the team work is destroyed. A good driver must train and drive 
each horse in his team so that he can bring both into the collar 
at the same time and by rein and whip keep each in time and 
tune, as well as give direction to the movement. 

The Need For Organized Leadership 

But there is a third type of organization which calls for lead¬ 
ership—an organized leadership. This is one made up of indi¬ 
viduals each of whom is doing a different thing; or of groups of 
individuals in which each group has a different task to perform. 
The getting together of such an organization is not simply a 
matter of multiplying individuals or groups as units, but of 
assembling individuals and groups as “parts” to make a com¬ 
pleted organic mechanism. The getting together of an organi¬ 
zation for baseball, basket ball, football, or for operating a 
woolen mill, is like assembling an automobile. A full comple¬ 
ment of human “parts” is required: and to provide against a 
shut down “spare-parts” must be carried unless they may be 
had from a general supply somewhere within reach. Then 
there is a fourth type—the federation, which calls fo’V a still 
liiglier organization of the leadership. In the case of an indus¬ 
trial organization, each full working complendent or unit, each 


54 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


mill let us say, may be multiplied indefinitely; that is, several 
“units” may be combined and still remain complete units by 
being brought under one management. A simple illustration of 
this is found in trading also, in the “chain-stores,” or in the 
“chain-restaurants.” This not only increases the possible ad¬ 
vantage, so long as there is an advantage in larger mass pro¬ 
duction or wholesale purchasing, or what not; but it also may 
operate to decrease the cost of organization for leadership and 
of carrying and obtaining human “spare-parts” unless the 
plants or units are located at “centers” where human spare 
parts may be had in a labor market. 

We find similar needs for leadership in government, and in 
government may be found all of these types of organization. 
In any case the need for more able leadership increases, for 
assembling, for adjusting, for tuning up, for operating or 
“playing the game to win.” As the organization becomes more 
complex, a first condition to its success is found in supplying the 
need for leadership.^ 

Organized Leadership in Industrial Co-operation 

The statement will not be gainsaid that every business, to 
succeed, must have it “boss”; a small blacksmith shop, a 
small foundry, a small tool making shop, a small machine shop, 
etc. Combine all these under one management and still the 
blacksmith shop, the foundry, the tool shop, the machine shop, 
must each have its “boss”; but in addition there is need for a 
general “boss” to be placed over all the “shop bosses.” Enlarge 
each shop and divide its work so as to make the work of each 
unit or group less complex and each of the several departments 
to the lowest operating unit must have its “boss.” Extend the 

^Slides: Charles M. Schwab. The Bethlehem Plant—General view. 
Schwab and his shipbuilding aids; Cornley, Piez, Ackerson and 
Bolles; Schwab & Hurley; Ship-launching; George W. Goe- 
thals. Henry Ford. The Ford Plant; Detroit workmen leav¬ 
ing Ford P14nt. Thomas A. Edison. The Edison Plant. 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


55 


organization both ways by taking in more plants, and by en¬ 
larging each plant until there are a hundred shops and each 
shop has added departments and each department is sub¬ 
divided into sections. The rule still holds good. Each work¬ 
ing group must have some one to whom the men look for orders 
and approvals or disapprovals. But to insure the benefits of 
broader and still broader co-operation and enable all to work 
together, leadership must become organized so that the whole 
federated undertaking may answer one voice and command in 
the carrying out of policies which affect the success of all. 

In industrial co-operation this conclusion comes to be ac¬ 
cepted as a matter of weighing business advantage. ' In mili¬ 
tary enterprise it becomes recognized as a condition of survival 
—for there the life of every man and the success of the cause 
for which resort was had to arms depends not alone on leader¬ 
ship, but the best leadership which can possibly be developed.^ 

Organized Leadership in Military Co-operation 

Military organization gains an advantage through federation 
and specialization. What has been found true in organization 
for sport and business has been found true of organization for 
military co-operation. This applies to organization for leader¬ 
ship as well as to organization for service. During a period of 
nearly three years the Allies sought to battle against a unified 
Prussian leadership, with ruinous results. The unified leader¬ 
ship of the Central Powers took advantage of the situation, first 
massing force against one of the allied armies, then another. 
First Belgium was crushed; then France was invaded; then 
Russia was driven back; then Servia was ground to dust; then 

^Slides: General Foch and the Allied War Council. General Persh¬ 
ing and the U. S. General Staff. Commanding Generals—1st, 
2d, 3d, and 4th armies, A. E. F. Divisional Commanders. Rich¬ 
ard I—Portrait; Richard I at Jaffa; at Azotus; William the 
Conqueror; Washington and his generals; McClellan and Staff; 
Robert E. Lee; William I and his generals. 


56 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


the armies of Roumanian then of Italy were humbled. The 
same tactics were used by the Prussian general staff as by 
Napoleon. Finally the Allies were forced to unify their com¬ 
mands under a common leadership. Thus the tide of battle 
was turned. 

Lack of Organized Leadership in Government 

All history teaches the same lesson. Whether the controlling 
organic structure be the family^ the gens, the tribe, the state, 
the empire: whether the enterprise be one of sport, industry, or 
military venture; whether the sport be organized for team or 
tournament; whether industry be that of a small farm or shop, 
a great plantation, a United States Steel Corporation, a Harri- 
man railway system; whether the military venture be a feud or 
a world war—the success of the enterprise depends on organi¬ 
zation and management; and both of these center in leader¬ 
ship. And just so soon as there are two or more co-operating 
groups, the management, the leadership, must be organized. 

It is only when we think of that agency which is organized 
for service of a political society—government—and of this in 
relation to its civic activities or the civil government, that there 
is any experience which seems to call the principle into ques¬ 
tion—and this experience is limited to conditions in which the 
need for government is little felt, as in the early years of our 
Republic. 

Leadership in Government 

In the United States, at the time our federal constitution was 
adopted, we had our local group leaderships, and although we 
saw the advantages of federation, it was to avoid interference 
rather than execute a national purpose or plan that the local 
units were united. There was little appreciation of a need for 
organized national leadership, except to lead the armed forces 
of the people to repel invasion. We saw great need for national 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


57 


co-operation on a commercial basis, but saw little need for 
national public service, other ^than that of making and enforcing 
rules of national as distinct from State and individual conduct. 
For fourteen years, from 1775 to 1789, we tried to run a fed¬ 
eral civil government without organized national leadership, 
with results so disastrous as to threaten dissolution and the loss 
of the benefits of co-operation in the work of subduing the con¬ 
tinent and making it subservient to the needs of society. 

Our Constitution of Government 

Then representatives were appointed to amend the old Arti¬ 
cles of Confederation which made no provision for executive 
leadership. And after much* debate it was finally decided to 
draft a new Constitution which provided for three co-ordinate 
branches,—Legislative, Executive and Judicial, and to recom¬ 
mend this for adoption in place of the older charter. The Con¬ 
stitution of the United States, the charter under which the 
government has operated since 1789, was an achievement. In 
its importance to democracy this is the greatest political docu¬ 
ment ever drawn. Professor Frederic Jesup Stimson, Amer¬ 
ica’s best-known student of constitutional law, says of it: 

“Our own constitution embodies and improves on 
the English Constitution.” 

And he characterizes the English Constitution as a summation 
of experience that 

“registers the totality—the aggregate—of those great 
principles which in eight hundred and forty years of 
struggle, the Saxon peoples have won back again from 
Norman Kings, from Roman conceptions of the sover¬ 
eign state. Each rising wave of freedom left its rec¬ 
ord in some historical document—then perhaps the 
times cause it to recede again—until the next flood 
leaves a higher record still. And the Federal Consti¬ 
tution, the whole of it, is nothing but a code of the 
people’s liberties, political and civil; a code of many 
centuries’ growth, which they willed to adopt in 1787, 


58 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


and willed never to abrogate without the people’s 
will.” (Stimson, “The American Constitution/’ pp. 

3-4.) ' 

Its Adequacy For the Development of Leadership 

In addition to specific provisions for the protection of the 
liberties of the people, there was a frame of government—an 
organization for their service. It was the latter part that was 
new. It is the latter part to which the question of leadership 
relates. But even in this part it is not to be assumed that the 
constitution has become obsolete with the changing needs of 
the nation for service. What is said on the relation of leader¬ 
ship has to do with but a small part of the whole. And the 
adjustments to provide more adequately for leadership are 
largely adjustments or changes of laws and practices which 
have grown up under the constitution—laws and practices not 
prescribed or compelled by the charter itself. 

While the United States Constitution is among the shortest 
of our American Constitutions, the powers granted were suffi¬ 
cient to establish an enduring government and to admit of a 
development which might have provided adequately for execu¬ 
tive leadership, had the people so willed it. But it was soon 
found that the public opinion of that time was hostile to such 
a course. In no place had democracy up to that time worked 
out a method of popular control which could be relied on to 
control strong leadership except by revolution, and therefore 
the people were opposed to executive leadership. One reason 
for not having worked out a method of popular, control which 
would be effective was that the people were distrusted by the 
propertied and educated classes who were relied on to 
make the Constitution; another reason was that due to their ex¬ 
perience with autocracy, the erection of a centralized executive 
authority was very cautiously approached by all classes; and 
as has been said there was nothing which called for strong ex- 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


69, 


ecutive leadership in America at that time. The only method of 
control which could be agreed on at the time therefore, was not 
related to leadership but to the exercise of authority; and this 
method was not one of popular control, but a method of 
“checks-and-balances.” This left the whole question of execu¬ 
tive leadership open to be developed or not in the future as the 
people might come to feel the need for it, and as an effective 
method of popular control might be perfected.^ 

Popular Fear of Organized Leadership 

How little popular control was relied on at that time appears 
in the fact that only the propertied classes could vote; in the 
fact that even the propertied classes, as a whole, were not to be 
trusted to elect a president; in the fact that when once elected 
by an “electoral college,” the executive so chosen was to have 
a four-year term with no opportunity for recall of the executive 
by the representative body or by the people through providing 
for election of another executive, when by vote of representa¬ 
tives it seemed apparent that the executive was not trusted and 
did not have the support of those to whom had been given con¬ 
trol over the public purse. 

Provisions which reflect distrust of government by the people 
are quite as apparent. Instead of the people at that time being 
willing to say to the executive: “We will look to you to lead in 
proposing changes of law and perfecting the machinery of gov¬ 
ernment so long as you have a majority of the representative 
body back of you,” and then providing a means of testing the 
right of the leader under such a warrant; instead of providing 
responsible executive leadership and then providing a means of 
holding this leadership to account for acts and proposals which 

^Reference Reading: Beard, ‘‘American Citizenship/* pp. 169-161. 
See also, Chap. VI, “Political Liberty.” 

Additional Readings; A. B. Hart, “National Ideals”; Chap. XIV, 
“The Man Who Leads”; Merriam, “American Political Theo¬ 
ries”; Chap. Ill, “The Reactionary Movement.” 


60 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


were not the subject of legal remedy, such as impeachment— 
this was a thing that up to that time democracy was wholly 
unused to. Neither a method of organizing responsible leader¬ 
ship, nor a method of holding centralized leaderships account¬ 
able, had been developed either in England or America—the 
most democratic peoples of the world. 

Limitations in Lieu of Control 

It seemed the part of wisdom, therefore, the only safe thing 
to do, to provide a means whereby one branch of the govern¬ 
ment could lock the wheels of official action, veto the powers of 
another branch whenever it saw fit, and leave the people out 
of it except as they could exercise powers of control through 
periodic elections. This was their conception of representative 
government—their conception of the best form when fram¬ 
ing the federal constitution. What they did not see was 
that this wheel-locking process might seriously impair the pub¬ 
lic service—a thing which developed later as the public came to 
demand a continuously effective agency of service—when popu¬ 
lar demands on the government became more pressing; and that 
the postponement of the day of reckoning till the end of a fixed 
period might develop a feeling of popular unrest which would 
produce a paroxysm in the body politic—or as Senator Root 
has put it, make political action the result of “fits of popular 
rage” in which the periodic elections were used to express lack 
of confidence instead of being used to settle issues; they became 
occasions for turning out everyone in responsible positions in 
the government without regard to any fair consideration of mat¬ 
ters under discussion on their merits. This is what Bagehot 
meant when he referred to the method of popular control which 
actually was developed in America as “cataclysmic”; what he 
saw was that the method of popular control as it developed here 
did not operate continuously to bring about adjustments in the 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


61 


machinery of government as needed^ but because the people 
were required to wait till forces of opposition accumulated and 
strains grew to the breaking point, the election became revolu¬ 
tionary in its action against the personnel of government—a 
condition opposed to progress. 

Individual citizens were protected against the government hy 
tlie Bill of Rights—this was insisted on by the followers of men 
like Jefferson. The chief reliance of the propertied classes 
was in provisions opposed to the operation of public opinion 
and in powers retained by the State governments. The State 
governments were left with such powers that they could be bal¬ 
anced against the federal government. And in both State and 
Federal government one branch was balanced against another 
with a view to making governing agents impotent to do harm. 
This made for institutional stability. To protect the govern¬ 
ment against the people, those who were elected were made 
“autocrats” for “fixed terms.” 

This is a feature of our Constitution which has been de¬ 
scribed many times. James Bryce puts it thus: 

“Each organ of government, the executive, the 
legislature, and the judiciary, is made a jealous ob¬ 
server and restrainer of the others. Since the people, 
being too numerous, cannot directly manage their af¬ 
fairs, but must commit them to agents, they have 
resolved to prevent abuses by trusting each as little 
as possible, and subjecting him to the oversight of 
agents, wlio will harass and check him if he attempts 
to overstep liis instructions. 

“Some one lias said that the American government 
and constitution are based on the theology of Calvin 
and the philosophy of Hobbes. This at least is true, 
that there is a hearty puritanism in the view of human 
nature which pervades the instrument of 1787. It is 
the work of men who believed in original sin, and were 
resolved to leave open for transgression no door which 
they could possibly shut.” 


62 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The Executive Deprived of Leadership 

Following the adoption of the Constitution_, the organic stat¬ 
utes bear the same evidences of distrust of executive leader¬ 
ship. 

The chief executive was hedged about in every possible way 
to prevent him taking the initiative—the result being that when 
anything went wrong either in the service organization or in 
the organization for leadership, no one could find the one to 
hold accountable for the fault. Each man in the organization 
could point to some one else and all of them could point to the 
fact that someone entirely outside of their organization had 
been given the authority to lock the wheels, and roll stones into 
the path of progress. The result was the regular habit of 
dodging responsibility—^the development of the art which has 
come to be known as “passing the buck.” 

Leadership Divided Within the Government 

Under the rules and statutes which were passed under the 
Constitution, the President was not even permitted to mark out 
and organize his administration; he was not even authorized to 
organize a group of official advisers. Advisers were provided 
for in the Constitution by having each state select two repre¬ 
sentatives called senators whose terms of office would be longer 
tlian that of the president. 

“The prevailing opinion at the time the Constitu¬ 
tion was framed was that the consulting function 
would be the senate, which together with the Presi¬ 
dent would form the Administration.” (Henry Jones 
Ford—Washington and His Colleagues, p. 23.) 

But, as in the case of the “electoral college,” when later in 
actual practice it was found that such, a group of advisors could 
not be used in matters of current administration, the President’s 
“cabinet” was formed of the heads of departments created by 
Congress. But this did not change the attitude towards leader- 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


63 


sliip. Following the spirit of the time, when departments were 
created, the chief officers were not thought of as ministers, and 
in faet never have been such. Leadership so far as this was 
provided for within the government took on the form of a much 
divided initiative—exercised by the many standing committees 
of Congress. 

“I know not how better to describe our form of gov¬ 
ernment in a single phrase than by calling it a govern¬ 
ment by the chairmen of standing committees of Con¬ 
gress.” (Wilson, “Congressional Government”; p. 

102 .) 

Initiative in Standing Committees 

This was the situation as observed by Mr. Wilson a hundred 
years after 1787; but it describes a practice which obtained 
from the start. In fact there was no centralized leadership 
known before 1787; and none has been provided for within 
the government since. Such as has developed has been outside 
the government and it is only a matter of chance if the person 
who possesses it comes to executive position, and the chances 
are all against it. 

Before the adoption of the federal constitution leadership 
had been local. Such was the habit in the States and in the 
continental congress. This was the only experience with which 
the people were familiar and in which they felt assurance. 
This experience was carried forward as the controlling feature 
of our plan of federal government as it was actually organized 
after the Constitution was adopted. The President was not 
thought of in any sense as head of an organized leadership; nor 
were the heads of departments under him regarded as falling 
under his domination. Fisher Ames, in a letter to Hamilton, 
in 1707, wrote: 

“The lieads of departments are chief clerks. In¬ 
stead of being the Ministry, the organs of the execu- 


61 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


live ])ower . . . committees already are the min¬ 

isters.” 

Justiee Story^ who entered Congress in 1808^ in his eonimen- 
taries on the federal government observed: 

“The executive is compelled to resort to secret and 
unseen influenees^ to private interviews and private 
arrangements to aeeomplish his appropriate purposes, 
instead of proposing and sustaining its own duties and 
measures by a bold, manly appeal to the nation in the 
face of its representatives.” 

The differenee between the offiee of President and that of a 
responsible head of an organization for leadership is deseribed 
by President Wilson in this way: 

“As has very happily been said by a shrewd eritie, 
our system is essentially astronomical. A President’s 
usefulness is measured not by effieieney, but by 
ealendar months. It is reekoned that if he be good at 
all he will be good for four years. A Prime Minister 
must keep himself in favor with a majority, a Presi¬ 
dent need only keep alive.” (Wilson, Congressional 
Government”; p. 249.) 

The Clash of Rival Interests 

As has been said, the whole people were united on the broad 
demoeratic principles of “justice,” “liberty,” and “equality.” 
But the praetieal maehinery for making these prineiples ef¬ 
fective in government by means of executive leadership had not 
yet been devised. In the make-up of society, as ever, there 
were the two great influences: those whieh make for aristoeracy 
and those whieh make for demoeraey. Those who were moved 
by the one or -the other of these forces, both groups, agreed that 
under the cireumstances they would vote for a system of con¬ 
trol, which provided for “locking the wheels.” It was not until 
more than half a eentury later that men began seriously to see 
the need for making democratic institutions effective for service 
—for doing work all of the time, and also for keeping them 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


65 


democratic. In the early days, all parties, democrats and 
aristocrats, radicals and conservatives, republicans and federal¬ 
ists, saw an advantage in being given a eliance through repre¬ 
sentatives in one branch or another to loek the wheels. The 
demoerat on the one hand thought of this as his refuge when 
individual liberty was threatened; the aristoerat looked to it 
for protection when vested rights were attacked. The conees- 
sions to the first interest are found in the bills of rights and in 
the “thou-shalt-nots” of the constitution. The concessions to 
the second are found in provisions to preserve the “status quo” 
so far as property rights were concerned.® 

The system of cheeks-and-balances is primarily a deviee for 
preservation of the status quo—and it was those which were 
interested in maintaining the status quo, without regard to 
needs for continuous adjustment, that dominated the eonstitu- 
tional convention. 

“The spirit of 1776, as it speaks to us from the 
Declaration of Independence, and the glowing words 
of Patriek Henry, was largely a revolutionary spirit, 
revolutionary in its faith in abstract principles, revo¬ 
lutionary also in its determination to carry through a 
tremendous political change in respect to grievances. 

. But the spirit of 1787 was an English spirit, 
and therefore a conservative spirit . . . which 

desired to walk in the old paths of precedent.” (James 
Bryce.)® 

Leadership Developed Outside the Government 

Another fact which continued the popular distrust of execu- 

^ Reference Reading: Beard, ‘‘American Citizenship”; Chap. IV, 
“Civil liberty”; Chap. V, “Property Rights.” 

Additional Reading: Merriam, “American Political Theories”; 
pp. 60-63; 84-86. 

‘^Reference Readings: Foerster & Pierson, “American Ideals”; pp. 
283-300. Bryce, “The American Commonwealth” (abridged 
edition); Chap. XXV, “General Observations on the Frame 
of National Government.” 


66 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


tive leadership was the aristocratic tendency of the Federalists^ 
who early gained control of the new government. One has only 
to read the diaries and correspondence of men around Wash¬ 
ington (men like John Adams, who had been most ardent in 
their support of the war) to appreciate how strong a hold the 
thoughts and habits of an aristocratic age had on the better-to- 
do of Americans. The silk and embroidery of the “gentle¬ 
men’s” dress, the fine old mahogany furniture, tell the same 
story as the transactions of the first three months after Wash¬ 
ington took the oath of office, settling points of etiquette. At 
a time when the gravest questions of state were to be decided, 
much time was taken in discussion about the President’s 
“canary-colored chariot, decorated with gilded nymphs and 
cupids, with the Washington Arms”; whether the President’s 
coach should be drawn by four or six horses; how often the 
President should hold a “levee”; whether he should be ad¬ 
dressed as “His Highness, the President of the United States 
of America, and Protector of their Liberties”; what were the 
forms to be observed at state dinners and how long they should 
last; how frequently state dinners should be given; what would 
be the character of Mrs. Washington’s “drawing rooms.” It is 
also to be noted that while this spoke of the spirit of the better- 
to-do, the “landed aristocracy” and the “traders” of the sea- 
coast, back in the country among the small farmers and 
pioneers of the “West,” the whole setting was regarded as 
hostile to the ideals of democracy. It was against all this 
that Jefferson became the first great leader of American 
democracy and as a result of his leadership became third 
President. 

The Leadership of Jefferson’^ 

“Jefferson was the first prophet of American 

^ Additional Reading: Merriam, “American Political Theories”; 

Chap. IV, “The Jeffersonian Democracy.” 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


67 


Democracy. . . . In the period of tlie Revolu¬ 

tion he Iiad brought in a series of measures wliich 
tended to throw the power of Virginia into the hands 
of the settlers of the interior rather than of the coast¬ 
wise aristocracy. The repeal of the laws of entail 
and primogeniture would destroy the great estates on 
which the planting aristocracy based its power. The 
abolition of the established Church would still 
further have diminished the influence of the coast¬ 
wise party in favor of the dissenting sects of the 
interior. His scheme of general public education re¬ 
flected the same tendency^ and his demand for the 
abolition of slavery was a characteristic of a repre¬ 
sentative of the West rather than of the old time 
aristocracy of the coast.” (Frederick J. Turner, 
“Contributions of the West to American Democ¬ 
racy.”) 

The Leadership of Jackson^ 

After the days of Jefl’erson when with the Bank of the 
United States and other capitalistic influences this spirit of 
resentment again asserted itself, Andrew Jackson was its in¬ 
terpreter and leader. 

“At last the frontier in the person of its typical 
man has found a place in the government. This six- 
foot backwoods man, with blue eyes that could blaze 
on occasion, this choleric, impetuous, self-willed 
Scotch-Irish leader of men, this expert duelist and 
ready fighter, this embodiment of the tenacious vehe¬ 
ment Irish was in politics to stay. ... In the 
War of 1812 and the subsequent Indian fighting, 
Jackson made good his claim, not only to the loyalty 
of the people of Tennessee, but of the whole West, 
and even of the Nation. . . . The triumph of 
Andrew Jackson marked the end of the old era of 
trained statesmen for the Presidency!” 

^ AcJcUtionnl Urndhig: Merriam, “American Political Theories”; 
Cliaj), V, “The Jacksonian Deniocracy.” 


68 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The Leadership of Lincoln^ 

The next to rise to a position of national leader, and through 
leadership in appeal to ideals of equality, was Lincoln. It was 
through this appeal that he gained and kept the confidence 
of the people, that gave strength to his leadership in spite 
of the system of congressional committee control through 
which leadership had been dissipated within the government; 
in spite of irresponsible party organizations under “boss rule,” 
• through which irresponsible leadership had been centralized 
outside of the government. Lincoln became the great prophet 
and leader of the people: 

What explains his vast success? As a force in 
history what does he count for? Perhaps the most 
significant detail in an answer to those questions is 
the fact that he never held conspicuous public office 
till at the age of fifty-two he became President. 

Lincoln, who is the moulder of events and 
the great creator of public opinion. . . . The 

Civil War was in truth Lincoln’s war.” (Nathaniel 
W. Stephenson, “Abraham Lincoln and the Union,” 
p. 136.) * * * * 

“He is the true history of the American people of 
his time. Step by step he walked before them; slow 
with their slowness, quickening his march with theirs, 
the true representative of the continent; an entirely 
public man; father of his country, the pulse of twenty 
millions throbbing in his heart, the thought of their 
minds articulated by his tongue.” (Ralph Waldo 
Emerson, Funeral Services, Concord, April 19, 1865.) 

American Leadership Personal, Not Official 

Thus at times the spirit of Democracy asserted itself, so 

^Reference Reading: Foerster & Pierson, “American Ideals”; pp. 
G()-77. 

Additional Readings: Macy, “Political Parties in the United 
States”; Chap. XVIll, “Abraham Idncoln as a Typical Demo¬ 
crat.” 

Merriam, “American Political Theories”; pp. 221-226. 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


69 


that great leaders stood out before the people and became the 
new rallying points in the determination of national policies— 
institutional change brought about by the “cataclysmic 
method.” At such times there was elFective leadership, for 
those who were put in positions of authority did not depend 
on an outside unofficial “organization” which came to take the 
place of official leadership and to pick out men who were 
safe “to run on platforms to catch votes”; Jefferson, Jackson 
and iJncoln were leaders who went before the people out¬ 
side of the government with a cause, and gained a following 
which, asserting the rights of a majority theretofore denied, 
placed their trusted apostles in control of the government— 
and kept them there until the particular end in view was 
achieved. Then, the institutions of the people making no pro¬ 
vision for responsible leadership, the irresponsible organiza¬ 
tions outside the government again came to their own. More¬ 
over, responsible leadership within the government became 
dissipated by the standing committee system, and centralized 
irresponsible leadership became effective in the “boss.” 

The Development of the “Boss” 

This is not said by way of making light of the government 
or as a challenge to the earnestness of spirit and patriotic 
devotion of Americans, but to point to the fact that they were 
finding their way in a trackless wilderness in a spirit of self- 
reliance, without official guides and that in time of great 
national emergency a leadership did develop which they were 
glad to accept and follow until the emergency was past. 

If these exceptions to the usual experience here may not 
convince that there is need for organized leadership, with au¬ 
thority as broad as the service organization itself, let us follow' 
the history of centralized leadership as it actually developed 
outside the government. The fact that we have made incom¬ 
plete provision for federated, responsible leadership within 


70 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


the government did not make the prineiple inoperative, but 
was a condition which brought forth an “organization” which 
saw in the need for leadership its opportunity for profit. The 
fact that we have accepted irresponsible leadership ought to 
convince us that, in the opinion of mankind, organized leader¬ 
ship is essential to effective political co-operation as well as 
to effective co-operation in sport and in business affairs. Let 
us follow the course of our outside, unofficial, irresponsible 
leadership. 

Experience with this type of initiative has had its value in 
j)roving 

“That as a matter of fact and experience, the more 
power is divided the more irresponsible it becomes.” 

But because of this irresponsibility and lack of popular ap¬ 
peal, and because of its essential weakness, a stronger prin¬ 
ciple of irresponsible leadership has asserted itself in the 
“bosses.” Entirely outside of the official machinery, the 
“bosses” have organized their following and controlled the 
processes of government. It was only in times of great 
emergency, such times as have been mentioned, that the leader¬ 
ship of the outside “bosses” has been shaken. The “party” of 
one “boss” was turned out, one “boss” was given a vote of lack 
of confidence only to enthrone the “boss” of the opposition. 
Except at times when a Jefferson, a Jackson, a Lincoln or a 
Roosevelt, conscious of popular* support, has dealt directly 
with the people, the whole scheme of political co-operation 
has been dominated by leaders who had no other claim to the 
powers wielded than that they made the practical necessity 
for some kind of leadership their own opportunity. The most 
convincing statement we have of the fact that leadership is not 
wanting at any time comes from Senator Elihu Root who, 
during the last half century, has had an intimate knowledge 
of how the public business has been managed. Speaking of 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


71 


the government of New York, whose experience is typical, he 
declared: 

Irresponsible Leadership 

“The most important thing in constituting govern¬ 
ment is to unite responsibility with power, so that a 
certain known person may be definitely responsible 
for what ought to be done; to be rewarded if he does 
it, punished if he does not do it. . . . 

“Now, anybody can see that all these hundred and 
fifty-two outlying agencies, big and little, . . . 

spending all the money they can get, violate every 
principle of economy, of efficiency, of the proper 
transaction of business. 

“We talk about the government of the constitution! 

. . . What has it been during the forty years of 

my acquaintance with it.^ . . . When I asked 

what did the people find wrong in our state govern¬ 
ment, my mind goes back to those periodical fits of 
public rage in which the people rose up to tear down 
the political leader, first of one party and then of the 
other party. It gives in to the public feeling of re¬ 
sentment against the control of party organizations, , 
of both parties and all parties. . . . From the 

days of Fenton, and Conkling, and Arthur, and Cor¬ 
nell, and Platt, from tlie days of David B. Hill, down 
to the present time, the government of the state has 
presented two different lines of activity; one of the 
constitutional and statutory offices of the state, and 
the other of the party leaders; they call them party 
bosses. ... It makes no difference what name 
you give, whether you call it Fenton, or Conkling, or 
Cornell, or Arthur, or Platt, or by the names of men 
now living. The rules of the state during the greater 
part of the forty years of my acquaintance with the 
state government has not been any man authorized 
by the Constitution or by the law; and. Sir, there is 
throughout the length and breadth of this state a 
dee]) and sullen resentment at being governed thus 
by men not of the people’s clioosing. Tlie party 


72 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


leader is eleeted by no one, aecountable to no one, 
bound by no oath of offiee, removable by no one.” 
(Address before the Constitutional Convention, 
1915.)^® 

Leadership, Responsible or Irresponsible, Inevitable 

Tlie purpose of this deseription, of how leadership has been 
developed under politieal institutions which failed to take into 
account the need for executive leadership, is to show that even 
when executive leadership has not shown itself within the gov¬ 
ernment, so necessary has it been found to have centralized 
leadership somewhere, that an organization has grown up and 
has come to assert itself on the outside. The great con¬ 
tributions made to world democracy since our government was 
founded have been in the development of effective leadership 
within the government and in providing adequate means of con¬ 
trol to make this leadership responsible to the people—to make 
real the concept of popular sovereignty. We must look largely 
to other countries, however, for experience in developing a 
responsible executive leadership—a leadership within the 
government as opposed to an unofficial irresponsible type. 
Only recently hav0‘‘we come to appreciate the need. During 
the last few years a very positive stand has been taken in 
some of the states; and in the federal government both Presi¬ 
dent Roosevelt and President Wilson were accorded the 
positions of leaders in spite of all of the rules and statutes 
which had been developed by a century of congressional 
initiative to prevent it. 

As has been said, while there was a spirit of extreme caution 
in the constitution to prevent executive autocracy, through the 

Slides: B. E. Fenton; Roscoe Conkling; A. B. Cornell; Chester 
A. Arthur; Thomas A. Platt; D. B. Hill; Wm. Tweed; C. F. 
Murphy; Sam Koenig; Mark Hanna; Jas. Cox; James Mc- 
Niehol; Abe Reuf; “Hinky-Dink”; “Bath-House.John.” 

Additional Reading: A. B. Hart, “National Ideals”; Chap. TX, 
“Unofficial Government.” 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


73 


introduction of a system of checks and balances before an 
effective method of popular eontrol had been devised, the 
charter was broad enough to have permitted adjustments and 
the outworking of institutional provisions for executive leader¬ 
ship, had this been demanded. But it was not demanded, and 
the rules of Congress and the statute law all were centered in 
subdividing administrative authority and making the adminis¬ 
tration responsible to a very much subdivided control which 
took the form of standing-committees. It has been the prac¬ 
tices that have grown up under the law which have made both 
the Federal and State governments what they are. Nor is this 
peculiar to our institutions. 

“The laws reach but a very little way. Constitute 
government how you please, infinitely the greater 
part of it must depend upon the exercise of powers, 
which are left at large to the prudence and upright- 
ness of ministers of state. Even all the use and 
potency of the laws depend upon them. Without 
them your commonwealth is no better than a scheme 
upon paper; and not a living, active, effective organi¬ 
zation .”—Edmund Burke. 

The Demand For Responsible Leadership 

The demand of the time is for responsible leadership. As a . 
majority of the people have come to look to the government for 
service, for an organization competent to do what they want 
done, the whole attitude has changed. This is shown, not 
alone in the larger influence of the President, but in the 
various state reorganizations which are taking place. 

Among the most lasting monuments that mankind has built 
have been those symbolic of leadership. Great arches have 
been built to commemorate the achievements of past military 
leadership.^^ It is significant that the great monuments of 

^'Slides: The Arch of Titus; The Arch of Trojan; The Arcli of 
Constantine. I/y\rc de Triomphe (Napoleon). 


74 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


American leadership have been to those whose devotion has 
been to the welfare of the people through ways of peace. 

Ability to Choose and Control Leadership the Test of a 
Democracy 

To the monuments to Washington, Jefferson and Lincoln 
must be added the memorials of a grateful world to Theodore 
Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson. The constant adoration of 
a liberty loving people must be to those around whom they 
have gathered as their leaders—and it is around leadership that 
democracy must build—for through leadership only can a peo¬ 
ple speak and give visible expression to their will. It is to 
their ability to choose between the many voices calling, which 
one they shall follow, that democracy must look for the 
security of its institutions, and their constant adaptations to 
new conditions. But another principle must also be kept in 
mind; that leadership to be democratic must at all times be 
under control of the people themselves. This is another way 
of saying what Jefferson and Lincoln and Roosevelt have said, 
that government itself to be democratic must be made the 
servant of the people. The attitude of the people toward gov¬ 
ernment has changed during the last few years. Instead of 
thinking of the government as an evil to be abated, it is now 
regarded as an everyday necessity. The masses look to the 
government. They want it made responsible. What has not 
been stressed enough in our thinking is that the only way a 
democracy can make its government responsible, is through a 
leadership which at any time may be called to the bar of 
public opinion. To do this it is not necessary initially to 
change the constitution under which we have lived so long, but 
this can be brought about by changing the rules of Congress 
and statute law. If then it may seem desirable to modify the 

The Washington Monument; The Jefferson Monument; St. 

Gauden’s lancoln; Lincoln Monument. 


LEADERSHIP NECESSARY 


75 


constitution somewhat sucli changes can be made with an under 
standing of what fundamental adjustments are desired. 


Reference Readings: Lapp, “Our America—The Elements of 
Chncs”; Chap. XX, “Putting Laws into Effect—The Executive.” 

Guitteau, “Government and Politics in the United States”; 
Chap. XXVI, “The President’s Powers and Duties.” 

Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and the World 
War”; Chap. IV, “The Congress—How I^aws are Made”; Cliap. 
V, “The President,” pp. 96-109; Chap. XI, “The Ministry and 
the Cabinet.” 

Bryce, “The American Commonwealth” (abridged edition); 
Chap. V, “Presidential Powers and Duties.” 

Beard, "^American, Citizenship”; Chap. VII, “The Great 
Parts of American Government.” 

Additional Readings: W. M. Sloane, “Party Government in the 
United States of America”; Chap. XXXIV, “Parties and the 
Presidency.” 

J. A. Smith, “The Spirit of American Government”; Chap. 
Ill, “The Constitution a Reactionary Document.” 

Macy, “Party Organization and Machinery”; Chap. Ill, 
“Presidential Leadership.” 

Wilson, “Congressional Government”; Chap. V, “The Execu¬ 
tive.” 

A. N. Holcombe, “State Governmenb in the United States”; 
Chap. X, “The State Executives (particularly “The Disorgan¬ 
ization of Administration,” pp. 281 ff). 

A. Iv. lyowell, “The Government of England”; Chap. XVH, 
“I'he Cabinet’s Control of the Commons.” 

Macy and Ganiiaway, "“Comparative Free Government”; 
Chaj). IV, “The Presidency”; Chap. XVH, “The Executive in 
France.” 

Beard, “American Government and Politics”; Chap. X, “The 
Powers of .the President”; Chap. XIV, “Congress at Work”; 
Cha]). VH, “The Development of Party Machinery”; Cha}). 
XXIA’', “The State Executive Department.” 

Merriam, “American Political Theories”; pp. 322-325. 







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IV. 


COxNTUOL OVER LEADERSHIP—AN ESSENTIAL OF 
DEMOCRACY 


‘'Thai (fovcrnment of the people, bif the people, 
and for the people, may not perish from the eartliT 


Ill dealing witli control we are dealing with the popular 
will and the means of assuring it—“government of the i:)eople, 
by the people and for the people.” 

An Idea of Public Service Without Popular Control* 

An East Indian philosopher^ visiting America, being asked 
about the attitude of his country toward British rule said: 

“The British do tlie rough work of government 
very w^ell. They seem to like that sort of thing and 
we are glad to be rid of it. Other people gifted in 
tlie art of organization have come down upon India 
and taken over her public service. To some we paid 
very dearly and got very little in return. But the 
British—they are good servants; they are courteous; 
and on the whole they have proved to be honest. 

They do the rough work of keeping order; they pro¬ 
tect our borders from invaders; they carry the mail 
and parcels; they build and repair our roads; clean 
our streets and do a lot of other useful things so that 
we are free to do pretty much as ^ve choose.” 

Kipling has given the British viewpoint in “The White 
Man’s Burden.” 

*From “Popular Control of Government,” Political Science Quar¬ 
terly, June, 1919. 




78 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


* * * * 

Take up the White Man’s burden— 

No tawdry rule of Kings^ 

But toil of serf and sweeper— 

The tale of common things. 

The ports ye shall not enter. 

The roads ye shall not tread. 

Go make them with your living 
And mark them with your dead. 

Take up the White Man’s burden— 

And reap his old reward; 

The blame of those ye better, 

The hate of those ye guard— 

The cry of hosts ye humor 

(Ah slowly) toward the light:— 

“Why brought ye us from bondage 
Our loved Egyptian night 

Take up the White Man’s burden— 

Ye dare not stoop to less— 

Nor call too loud on Freedom 
To cloak your weariness. 

* * * * 

Popular Control an Essential of Democracy 

This is the ideal of service which democracy extends to 
peoples whose public opinion is unorganized or whose stand¬ 
ards of justice are so far different from those which prevail 
in nations that have developed strong leadership and co-opera¬ 
tion as to require them to superimpose their authority to 
preserve the peace. This is an ideal quite different from that 
which prevailed when a commercialized autocracy in power 
forced the opium habit on China. It is the spirit in which 
American colonial enterprise has been undertaken. 

The East Indian philosopher’s idea of freedom was that he 
had a white man working for him. This differs radically from 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


79 


our democratic ideals in one respect, but is quite consistent in 
another. The idea that government exists to serve is funda¬ 
mental; the individual member of a democratic society is 
usually glad to rid himself of “the rough work” of attending 
to those wants which constitute common necessities and con¬ 
veniences. But democracy insists that the people, those whom 
the government serves, shall have the right to decide what 
shall be done for them by their common agency of service, and 
wliat shall be left to voluntary arrangements with individuals 
and groups. ' 

The Flag—the Symbol of Popular Sovereignty 

In this thought, when an American takes his hat off to the 
Flag, whether he stands alone in a foreign land or before an 
armed force that has the power fo overthrow a Kingdom, he 
does so not as a token of servitude, nor yet with a feeling of 
superiority to public service, but as a mark of respect for the 
power and sovereignty of the people—to the majesty of that 
great self-governing society of a hundred million citizens of 
which he is a member—a token of loyalty to his countrymen, 
who, conscious of their interdependence as well as their 
strength, bound together by common ideals and purposes under 
a constitution of Permanent Union, are ready to respond as a 
group with all the might that is in them if need be to any 
appeal or impulse which inspires common action. To Ameri¬ 
cans the government is their own device, their own means of 
giving expression to a dominant national will. The idea of the 
government thwarting that will is intolerable. 

Why Popular Sovereignty 

Democracy insists that the ascertained will of the people 
.•■hall control because it recognizes that: 

“The essential characteristic of all government, 
whatever its form, is authority”; that 


80 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


“There must in every instanee be, on the one hand, 
governors; and, on the other, those who are gov¬ 
erned”; that 

“The autliority of governors, directly or indirectly, 
rests in all cases ultimately on force”; that 

“Government, in the last analysis, is organized 
force, not necessarily or invariably' organized armed 
force, but the will of a few men, or many men, or of 
a community prepared by organization to realize its 
own purposes with reference to the common affairs of 
the community—organized, that is, to rule, to 
dominate.” 

Therefore, the only course consistent with libert}^ is to make 
the machinery of government subservient to the will of a 
sovereign majority. While governors must be given the voice 
of authority, governors in turn must be made to hear and heed 
the voice of the people. 

Instead of accepting government as it is given them by a 
military leader who like a Czar or a Kaiser assumes to rule by 
divine right, and who would secure loyalty by a benevolent 
paternalism, the spirit of democracy wherever it has been able 
to develop a leadership of its own has insisted that the people 
“are, and of right ought to be, free” to choose their own way. 
Freedom means that each individual must be left the largest 
])ossible range of choice, consistent with the equal op])ortunity 
of all. 

Reconciliation of Sovereignty with Liberty 

The underlying philosophy of Democracy as formulated by 
President Wilson, before he entered the field of iwaetical 
])olitics and while he was a teacher of civics, is this: 

“The hope of society lies in an infinite individual 
variety, in the freest possible play of individual 
forces: only in that can it find the wealth of resource 
which constitutes civilization, with all its appliances 
for satisfying human want and mitigating human 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


81 


suffering, all its incitements to thought and spurs to 
action. It should be the end of government to assist 
in accomplishing the objects of organized society. 
There must be constant adjustments of governmental 
assistance to the need of a changing social and indus¬ 
trial organization. Not license of interference on the 
part of government, but only strength, and adaptation 
of regulation. The regulation that I mean is not inter¬ 
ference; it is the equalization of conditions, so far as 
possible, in all branches of endeavor; and the equali¬ 
zation of conditions is the very opposite of inter¬ 
ference. 

“Every rule of development is a rule of adaptation, 
a rule of meeting ‘The circumstances of the case’; 
but the circumstances of the case, it must be remem¬ 
bered, are not, so far as government is concerned, 
the circumstances of any individual case, but the cir¬ 
cumstances of society’s case, the general conditions 
of social organization. The case of society stands 
thus: the individual must be assured the best means, 
the best and fullest opportunities for complete self¬ 
development: in no other way can society itself gain 
variety and strength. But one of the most indis¬ 
pensable conditions of opportunity for self-develop¬ 
ment, government alone, society’s controlling organ, 
can supply. All combinations which necessarily 
create monopoly, which necessarily put and keep in¬ 
dispensable means of industrial or social development 
in the hands of a few, and these few, not the few se¬ 
lected by society itself, but the few selected by arbi¬ 
trary fortune, must be under the direct or indirect 
control of society. To society alone can the power of 
dominating by combination belong.’’ (The State, par. 
1522-3.) 

By such means are ideals of justice, equality of opportunity, 
and freedom of the individual to choose, made consistent with 
the exercise of authority. President Roosevelt put the same 
thought into his address to delegates met to amend the Ohio 
Constitution of government. 


82 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


“The only safe course to follow in this great 
American democracy is to })rovide for making the 
popular judgment effective. When this is done, then 
it is our duty to see that the people, having full 
power, realize their resjDonsibility for exercising that 
power aright. But it is false constitutionalism, a 
false statesmanship, to endeavor by the exercise of a 
perverted ingenuity to seem to given the people full 
power and at the same time to trick them out of it. 

Yet that is precisely what is done in every case when 
the State permits its representatives, whether on the 
bench or in the Legislature or in executive office, to de¬ 
clare that it has not the power to right grave wrongs, 
or that any of the officers created by the people, and 
rightfully the servants of the people, can set them¬ 
selves up to be the masters of the people.” 

Popular Control the Only Sure Foundation 

Democracy insists on popular control over the government, 
because this has been found by experience to be the only sure 
foundation upon which a free people may build. If a people 
are subdued by conquest, even then there is an underlying 
force of public opinion, an underlying concept of justice which 
cannot long be violated with impunity, for it is the unwritten 
law of a race, the common habits of mind, the common re¬ 
gard of each for the other, that binds individuals together and 
makes them a nation. It is not the will of a ruler! A con¬ 
quering army, alien to the land, may maintain a ruling class 
so long as these armed forces can subsist by spoliation, but in 
the end they either grow weak for lack of support and fall 
victims to other alien forces, or the people to whom they must 
look for support organize against them. 

“The alien throne was maintained by force of arms 
and taxes were mercilessly wrung from the subject 
populations; but never did the despot venture to 

'^Reference Readhu/: Foerster & Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
pp. 114-132. 


POPULAR CONTROL OP LEADERSHIP 


83 


change the customs of the conquered land. Its native 
laws he no more dared to touch than would a prince 
of the dynasty which he displaced. He dared not 
play with the forces latent in the prejudices, the 
fanaticism, of his subjects. He knew that these were 
volcanic, and that no prop of armed men could save 
his tlirone from overthrow and destruction, should 
they once break forth.” 

An autocracy, even tliough it is not overthrown by forces 
from without, can last only so long as public opinion supports 
it or an opposing opinion remains unorganized. When a 
people become hostile to their government, and gather their 
forees around a leadership resourceful enough to assert their 
will, the government must readapt itself to this controlling 
will. If laws are passed and institutions are built up which 
the people disapprove, sooner or later they must go. If the 
effect of these laws and institutions is to give continuing pro¬ 
tection to those who, through them, have come to enjoy special 
privileges and monopolies, sooner or later they must be modi¬ 
fied. If effort is made to protect privilege by making popular 
control difficult, by depriving people possessed of democratic 
ideals of an orderly method of exercising control, still they 
insist on expressing their will. They insist on doing this by 
peaceful means if possible; but if these prove ineffective then 
disappointment and distrust finally give place to resentment, 
and resentment to organized violence. 

Revolution the Result of Lack of Institutional Provision 
for Popular Control 

The right of Democracy to control the form of government, 
as well as the acts of governors, is the subject-matter of our 
Declaration of Independence. The principle then laid down 
was: Whenever any form of government becomes destructive 
at the ends of liberty, justice and equality, as understood by 
the people themselves, it is their right to alter it, or to abolish 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


8'i 

it, and institute a new government as the case may require— 
“laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its 
powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect 
their safety and happines^.” This is the accepted democratic 
doctrine known as the right of revolution. 

Assumptions of “Divine Right” Versus Popular Control 

Breadth of vision may be gained in application of this 
principle by going outside our own experience. Louis XIV of 
France conceived the notion that he was superior to the popu¬ 
lar will. Such was his assumption when he said “The State! 
I am the State.” Louis XV said: “We hold our crown from 
God alone. . . . The Right to make laws, by which our 

subjects must be conducted and governed, belongs to us alone, 
independently and unshared.” But there grew up a sullen re¬ 
sentment among the people which finally blazed forth in the 
French Revolution and resulted in the execution of the royal 
family. This was a violent exercise of popular control.^ 

The whole history of the growth of English constitutional 
government is a lesson in popular control. This was expressed 
in revolution until at last within the century following the 
American revolution the English people through their parlia¬ 
ment worked out a method of popular control by orderly pro¬ 
cedure. It was in fact half a century after the American 
revolution, after England was threatened with the loss of 
Canada and the other colonies as well, that the ruling classes 
of Great Britain provided adequate means for making political 
leadership responsible by giving to the people an orderly way 
of controlling it.^ 

^Slides: I.,ouis XIV—“I am the State”; Louis XV; Louis XVI 
being brought from Versailles to Paris by the mob; Attack on 
the Tuileries; The Trial of Louis XVI; Trial of Marie An¬ 
toinette; The Execution; The National Assembly. 

^Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War,” Chap. IX, “The Rise of Free Government in 
England.” 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


85 


During the time that the American colonies were developing 
a public opinion which would insist on ideals of democracy, 
Charles I was led to the block; Cromwell and his government 
had fallen; James II had been driven from the throne. The 
instrument through which English democracy finally asserted 
itself was a Parliament of representatives of the people, which 
asserted the rights of the people to control. Charles I denied 
their right; and Cromwell as the head of the army loyal to 
Parliament deposed the king. For five years after the execu¬ 
tion of Charles I, Parliament governed the English common¬ 
wealth without king or lords. Then the need for a duly con¬ 
stituted leader being felt, Cromwell was chosen protector under 
a written constitution (The Instrument of Government). But 
in the settlement Parliament did not retain to itself sufficient 
powers of control. The government lasted under a quasi-mili¬ 
tary leadership till the death of Cromwell, when the whole 
structure collapsed. The government of Charles II was set up 
but again it was torn down under James II by calling in the 
army under leadership which brought in William of Orange.^ 
This was popular control, but control by revolution. Napo¬ 
leon having risen to military command during the French Revo¬ 
lution followed in the footsteps of Cromwell, with far greater 
success.® But institutions built on assumptions of irresponsible 
leadership could not permanently succeed. 

William II has given to the world another convincing dem¬ 
onstration of the futility of the claims of irresponsible leader- 

* Slides: Charles I; Trial of Charles I; On Way to Execution; 
Execution of Charles I; Charles II; Oliver Cromwell; Crom¬ 
well Drives Out I.ong' Parliament; James II; William of 
Orange landing in England. 

’^Slides: Napoleon at the head of the Army at Austerlitz; Napoleon 
Crowning himself emperor; Napoleon Crowning Josephine 
empress; Signing Abdication; Napoleon at St. Helena. Wil¬ 
liam I with his generals; William I crowning himself emperor; 
William II at the Grand Review with President Roosevelt 
as his guest. 


86 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


ship. Here is his claim of right to rule in defiance of the opin¬ 
ions of mankind. “My grandfather^ by his own right, set the 
Prussian erown upon his head, once more distinctly emphasiz¬ 
ing the fact that it was accorded him by the will of God alone 
. . . and that he looked upon himself as the chosen instru¬ 
ment of heaven. . . . Looking upon myself as the instru¬ 

ment of the Lord, without regard to the opinions and inten¬ 
tions of the day, I go my way. ... I welcome with all my 
heart those who wish to assist me in my work, no matter who 
they may be, but those who oppose me in this work I will crush. 
. . . The only pillar on which the realm rested was the army. 
So it is today . . . the spirit of the Lord has descended 

upon me because I am the Emperor of the Germans. I am the 
instrument of the Almighty. I am his sword, his agent. Woe 
and death to those who do not believe in my mission! Woe and 
death to the cowards! God demands their destruction, God 
who, by my mouth, bids you to do His will.” 

Though his own people were willing to accept this “rule 
by divine right,” when he sought to impress his authority on 
others, the opinion of mankind opposed to autocracy responded 
to leadership which led the forces of democracy to his undoing.® 

One of the lessons which this war taught was a lesson in 
the need for a centralized leadership. The God of battle was 
on the side of autocracy until a leadership had been organized 
around which all the forces of democracy could rally—a leader¬ 
ship whose authority to direct was as broad as the joint enter¬ 
prise undertaken. 

Democracy has also learned another lesson: that leadership 
becomes autocratic unless it is controlled by the ideals of lib¬ 
erty, justice and equality, which reside in the hearts of the 
people. 

^ Slide: Willinm IT at Auiorengen. 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


87 


The Basis for Permanent Peace and Progress 

Therefore, tlie permanent peace of the world, the advance¬ 
ment of civilization, and the continuing happiness and pros¬ 
perity of nations, depend on Democracy finding a way to insti¬ 
tutionalize able, strong, effective executive leadership on the 
one hand; and on the other hand, a way to institutionalize the 
principle of popular control over executive leadership in such 
manner that it may be both intelligent and effective. In other 
words, the effectiveness of co-operation depends on the ability 
and strength of executive leadership; while able and strong 
executive leadership to be safe must be controlled. And the 
only control which can operate for enduring peace and perma¬ 
nence in institution-building is a form of control which insures 
the good will and friendship, the confidence and loyal support, 
of the society which the government serves—and at the same 
time surrounds the government of each nation with the friendly 
interest and support of the democracy of the world. 

Provisions for Popular Control Necessary to the Develop¬ 
ment of Leadership 

While this principle will be conceded as a national ideal, it 
involves the development of two institutional features to which 
we have given little thought. It was only within the last few 
years that leaders of public thought, men who were looked up 
to and whose opinions were regarded, went so far as President 
Roosevelt when to the delegates of the Ohio Constitutional Con¬ 
vention in 1912 he said: 

“The people have nothing whatever to fear from 
giving any public servant power so long as they 
retain their own power to hold him accountable.” 

This was said in support of proposals for the adoption of 
popular initiative, referendum and recall, including the recall 
of judicial decisions—not in fact a continuously operating con¬ 
trolling device but a mechanism to prevent high pressure explo- 


88 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


sion. Of similar import was the preachment of Senator Root 
when in 1915 he told the New York Constitutional Convention, 

“The most important thing in constituting a gov¬ 
ernment is to unite responsibility with power, so that 
certain known persons may be definitely responsible 
for what ought to be done; to be rewarded if he does 
it, punished if he does not do it, and that the person 
held responsible shall have the power to do the thing. 
Under our system we have divided executive power 
among many and we have thus obscured responsibility 
because in the complicated affairs of our government 
it is hard for the best informed to know who is to be 
blamed or who is to be praised.” 

But neither Senator Root nor anyone in .the convention pro¬ 
posed any method which insured the people confidence in the 
effective exercise of control. The autocratic use of centralized 
executive power, and the constitution as framed, were over¬ 
whelmingly defeated at the polls. President Wilson has en¬ 
larged on this idea in his writings. In 1885, his concept of the 
relation of leadership and control was quite clear: 

“If there be one principle clearer than another it is 
this: that in any business whether of government or 
mere merchandising, somebody must he trusted, in 
order that when things go wrong it may be quite plain 
who shall be punished. . . . Power and strict ac¬ 

countability for its use, are the essential constituents 
of good government. . . . The best rulers are al¬ 

ways those to whom great power is entrusted in such 
a manner as to make him feel that they will surely 
be abundantly honored and recompensed for a just 
and patriotic use of it, and to make them know that 
nothing can shield them from full retribution for 
every abuse of it.” (Congressional Government, pp. 
283-4.) 

In his writings he has pointed out that the distrust in which 
both legislators and executives are held is due to lack of provi¬ 
sion for developing leadership within the government on the 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSFIIP 


89 


one hand and lack of provision for locating and enforcing re¬ 
sponsibility when anything goes wrong on the other; but he has 
suggested no method whereby responsible leadership may be 
developed within the government except the advocacy of a 
short-ballot and this carries with it no effective mechanism for 
the exercise of popular control. 

Reconsidering the attitude of the public mind the conclusion 
would seem beyond question that an effective mechanism of 
popular control must first be devised before the people will con¬ 
sent to the further development of executive power. That is, 
they will insist on retaining a decentralized irresponsible execu¬ 
tive, with all its faults and weaknesses (except in time of great 
national emergency) until some method is found which they can 
trust for impressing their will on the government. Then in 
time of great emergency they will rely on their great resource¬ 
fulness, and trust to the loyalty of the people and to democratic 
ideals, to protect the nation from the autocratic use of power. 

Control Over Executive Leadership the Primary Func¬ 
tion of Representative System 

It is a fact of more than historic interest that the first step 
toward the development of constitutional government in Eng¬ 
land after the Norman Conquest was a convention which had 
for its purpose setting up a mechanism of control over the 
executive. When the barons met at Runnymede and by threat 
of revolution forced King John to sign Magna Charta, control 
was thought of as fundamental.'^ The mechanism of control 
then insisted on was that no taxes should be levied except con¬ 
sent first be had from tlie Great Council. 

It is also of interest to note that Parliament was first organ- 

Slides: Presentation of Magna Charta by Langton; John signing 
Magna Charta at Runnymede; Confirmation by Henry III; 
The Clarendon Convention. 

Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War”; pp. 165-171. 


90 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


ized, and for many years continued^ as a controlling device 
before it came to exercise law-making powers. 

Control Over the Purse not Enough 

In other words_, historically, the function of control has been 
thought to be of greater importance than the function of law¬ 
making; and the principle of control over executive leadership, 
by control over the purse, has been insisted on to the point of 
making it an essential of all democratic charters. But this con¬ 
trol over the purse by a representative body did not prove effec¬ 
tive to prevent revolution—in fact it took more than six hun¬ 
dred years to develop a method of control which could be posi¬ 
tively and effectively actuated by an informed public opinion, 
when there was a demand for institutional adjustment or 
change in institutional policy based on knowledge of conditions. 

Four Essentials of the Mechanism of Popular Control 

One of the subjects of chief concern when we adopted our 
Constitution was to prevent the popular will from exercising 
itself on the government by violence. During the first twelve 
years after its adoption there was a growing spirit of unrest. 
This is called “the critical period” in our national history. 
Washington and Adams and their colleagues were boldly 
charged with trying to set up an autocracy. In appeal to this 
spirit of resentment to the popular distrust and feeling of re- 
sistence which at times threatened revolt, Jefferson gained his 
following. He went before the people as the apostle of democ¬ 
racy and was elected President. Jefferson was not hostile to 
tlie Constitution. In fact he was one of its staunchest defend¬ 
ers. His position was that it was not the constitution which 
was at fault but the interpretation and use of ])owers under it. 
Wlien he took the oath of office he sought to reassure the })eople. 
His inaugural address shows grave concern lest the people 
lose faith in the government which had been set up by the 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


91 


fathers to establish justice, to insure domestie tranquility, pro¬ 
vide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and 
secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity.” 
He urged that this be preserved “in its whole constitutional 
vigor,” “as the sheet anchor of our peace at home and abroad.” 

JeflFerson^s Statement of Principles of Control 

In this address he stated what he understood to be the prin¬ 
ciples of democracy that he believed in, and, while he did not 
so classify them, he included among them, these principles of 
popular control:* 

1. “Jealous care for the right of election—a mild and 

safe corrective of abuses which are lopped by 
revolution where peaceable remedies are unpro¬ 
vided.” 

2. “The absolute acquiescence in the decision of a ma¬ 

jority, from which there is no appeal but to 
force.” 

3. “The diffusion of information and the arraignment 

- of all abuses at the bar of public opinion.”® 

These are three of four principles with which democracy has 
been working for a hundred years in an effort to develop an 
effective mechanism of popular control over leadership. From 
the first we get the principle of popular elections; from the 
second the principle of majority rule; from the third w,e get a 
principle with the operation of which we have not become 
familiar. If, by the “arraignment of all abuses at the bar of 
public opinion” Jefferson meant anything of practical use he 
must have meant the arraignment of administrative officers be¬ 
fore some kind of a representative body to answer for their acts 
and proposals in the use of power; if, by “the diffusion of 
information” he meant anything of practical use he must have 

*This Discussion of Jefferson’s four principles is an adaptation 
from an article entitled “Popular Control of Government”;' 
Political Science Quarterly, June, 1910. 

^Reference Reading: Foerster and Pierson, “American Ideals”; 
iq). 61-71; 257-260. 


92 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


meant that some method must be provided whereby the people 
can act on knowledge of the facts and not on misinformation 
as to what has been done and what is being planned or proposed 
in the public service; in practical application it seems clear 
that some method must be provided for getting at the facts, 
before representatives are called to vote, and before popular 
elections. This is the enly way that popular election and 
majority expression can be based on knowledge, instead of 
misrepresentation and appeals to passion.. This third principle 
of popular control may be more definitely formulated as: the 
arraignment of those in charge of Administration for judgment 
on evidence. A fourth part of an effective mechanism of popu¬ 
lar control which has come to be recognized though not listed 
by Jefferson is implied in the closing paragraph of his address: 

“Relying, then, on the patronage of your good 
will, I advance with obedience to the work, ready to 
retire from it whenever you become sensible how much 
better choice it is in your power to make.” 

This, while in all human probability it was intended and 
understood to be a polite compliment, has in it the essentials of 
a fourth recognized principle of effective popular control— the 
principle of popular recall. 

The Development of These Four Principles in America 
and Great Britain 

In this relation it is to be noted that not one of these four 
principles of control up to that time had been institutionalized, 
either here in America, or in any other country. Nearly the 
whole mechanism of popular control which could be made effec¬ 
tive and which in its operation would prevent revolution was 
undeveloped. But here were the principles, which in combina¬ 
tion would make the action of majorities deliberate; and like 
the principles of mechanics, means must be found for their 
integration into the scheme or order of things with which men 
work to make them of practical consequence. 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


93 


The Principle of Popular Elections 

As suggestive of the recognized soundness and fundamental 
importance of these four principles^ as well as indicating the 
time required for Institutional adjustment, even though simple 
in character, note these facts: That it was not till after half a 
century of agitation and two broad partisan overturnings here 
in America, (the first under Jefferson and the second under the 
leadership of Jackson), that elections were made popular; and 
then they were limited to manhood suffrage. In most of our 
states, where women have not been permitted to have a voice in 
the exercise of control over the government, the question is still 
an issue, but manhood suffrage took control out of the hands of 
the propertied classes. In Great Britain, readjustment to a 
basis of manhood suffrage came at a still later date—beginning 
in the Reform Acts and continuing down through a century.® 

The Principle of Acceptance of the Judgment of the 
Majority 

Great Britain has long been schooled in the second principle 
(“absolute acquiescence in the decision of a majority”) but 
without the “absolute,” for it had only a qualified meaning. 
The controversy over the right of the House of Lords to over¬ 
rule the Commons—the representatives of the people—^was not 
settled until the twentieth century, and even now the expressed 
will of a majority may be held in abeyance till by a second 
passage at a subsequent session the first judgment is confirmed. 
In America, at the time of the adoption of the Constitution there 
was very great distrust of a majority, and it was not till after 
the failure of many efforts to thwart the will of the majority, 
including the Whiskey Rebellion, the movements culminating in 
the Virginia-Kentucky Resolutions, the Hartford Convention, 
the threat of Secession by South Carolina, finally ending in the 

^Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War”; Chap. XII, “Parliament and the Growth of 
Democracy.” 


94 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


Civil War, that the operation of this principle, so far as pro¬ 
vided for in the Constitution, became accepted in its national 
application. 

The Principle of Arraignment of Leaders to Be Tried on 
Evidence 

The importance of the third principle, (the arraignment of 
leaders of administration before the bar of public opinion, to 
be tried on evidence), in part had been recognized by Eng¬ 
lish-speaking people from the days of Magna Charta. The 
establishment of a representative body, to sit regularly and 
review the acts and proposals of leaders of the Administration, 
and with power to enforce its judgments by having control over 
the purse,—this has been recognized as an essential to the 
mechanism of control whether in an aristocracy or a democracy 
—^it has long been thought of as the fundamental character¬ 
istic of responsible government. Magna Charta was forced on 
King John by a group of aristocrats who by this means would 
make the executive responsible to them, and who had present 
in their armed retainers the force necessary to apply the prin¬ 
ciple of control by revolution if the principle of peaceful con¬ 
trol were not accepted. 

Later, when aristocracy had been forced to give way before 
democracy—more than six hundred years later—and the same 
principle of control over executive leaders was still operative, 
exemplification of this principle of control was still regarded 
as the most important function of Parliament. This was the 
interpretation of the function of the House of Commons, given 
by John Stuart Mill in 1861: 

“To watch and control the government; to throw 
the light of publicity on its acts; to compel a full 
explanation and justification of all of them which 
any one considers questionable; to censure them if 
• found condemnable—to be at once the nation’s com¬ 
mittee on grievances; an arena in which not only the 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


95 


opinion of the nation, but that of every section of it, 
and as far as possible, of every eminent individual 
that it contains, can produce itself in full sight and 
challenge full discussion.” 

Mill’s statement was a contribution to a broad propaganda 
which was then going the rounds in England under theTeader- 
ship of Gladstone, the aim of which was to perfect the pro¬ 
cesses and institutional adjustments necessary to make the 
third Jeffersonian principle of control effective as applied to 
their political system. Early in the century, about the time 
of Jefferson’s inaugural, the first step was taken in England 
by establishing the principle of responsible leadership.* That 
is, the enforcement of responsibility means that if anything 
went wrong, someone must be made to answer for it, someone 
must be “arraigned at the bar of public opinion”—must be 
held to account; the British decision was that that person was 
the Prime Minister. And to make accountability certain, it 
came to be accepted as law that the whole cabinet was on 
trial, on the theory that the Prime Minister was responsible 
for them; they must stand together or fall as a man. This was 
a measure of justice, since it at once insured loyalty to leader¬ 
ship as well as provided for and located responsibility.^® 

Then the next step was to constitute the House of Commons 
a Court of Inquest. The law of “Cabinet Solidarity” made 
certain that the Prime Minister would be brought before the 
court to give an account of his stewardship, and that his ad¬ 
visors must share in paying the penalty if anything went 
wrong; a regular form of accounting and trial practice was 
provided for in the budget procedure—^the procedure in which 
decision was made as to whether further support would be 
forthcoming. 

* Anson, “Law and Custom of the Constitution,” Part II, p. 110. 

Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War”; pp. 208-219. 

Additional Reading: A. L. Lowell, “The Government of Eng¬ 
land”; Chap. II, “The Crown and the Cabinet.” 


96 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The membership of the House, on occasions when an ac¬ 
counting was to be had, was organized as a jury sitting in 
Committee-of-the-Whole; provision was made which required 
members of the Administration requesting funds to be present 
to explain past acts. In this, Gladstone insisted that the ends 
of political justice required that provision be made as in a 
j ury proceeding whereby: the accuser—the political adversary 
—should be brought face to face with the accused; the inquest 
should be based on evidence; and both parties would have the 
benefit of counsel. Early in the nineteenth century provision 
had been made for arraignment, but when Gladstone came to 
power, he found that there was lack of provision for trial of 
the case against the Administration at the bar of public opinion 
and he demanded this protection. To supply these missing 
elements in the existing scheme of political justice by which 
Administration leaders were to be tried, Gladstone proposed, 
and during the later sixties his proposals became law, that the 
members of the House should provide the means for having 
every act of the Administration, involving money transactions, 
reviewed by their own agents, a bureau of the Treasury, and 
then by an independent agency of Parliament which would 
report with its approval or disapproval. To this end the office 
of ‘‘Comptroller and Auditor General” was created, which was 
placed beyond the reach of the Administration by being given 
an independent status with tenure for life.* He also insisted 
that his political adversaries, the organized “opposition,” 
should be given every facility for informing themselves; that 
there should be a Committee on Public Accounts, the Chair¬ 
man of which would be of the Opposition, which would 
have power during the sessions and between sessions to in¬ 
quire into the acts of the Administration—with access to 
public records and the right of subpoena; and that the auditor’s 
report filed at the beginning of the session should be referred 
* Subject to removal by Parliament. 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


97 


to this Committee, that the staff of the Auditor should be 
available to help the Committee to a complete understanding of 
the facts; that when the budget and the accounts of the Ad¬ 
ministration were presented, each member of the House, the 
trial jury, should be given fullest opportunity to “question^’ 
leaders of the Administration, criticise, offer evidence, and 
propose votes of censure. While this established an effective 
means of making the critical opposition serviceable to the 
people by constituting them their responsible agents to exer¬ 
cise “eternal vigilance,” it also gave to the Executive the 
primary elements of justice, namely: the right to be con¬ 
fronted by his accusers; the right to be tried on evidence; and 
the right of representation by counsel. It was in the interest 
of protecting the Administration against irresponsible criticism 
and the insidious methods which had been employed to turn 
public opinion against those who head the public service that a 
definite practice was worked out to make this third Jeffersonian 
principle effective. It relates itself to popular control in that 
provision was made not alone to insure political justice, but by 
requiring these proceedings to take place in Committee-of-the- 
Whole, all must be done openly and with the cabinet present 
to answer and defend so that members and the people would 
not be misinformed when the time came for them to vote. 
These were the institutional adjustments which were worked 
out under the leadership of Gladstone to make the third Jeffer¬ 
sonian principle of popular control effective in the mechanism 
of popular control as applied to the English government, while 
we, here in America, were busily engaged in Civil War trying 
to establish the second. 

The Principle of Recall or Appeal to the People 

And, as a necessary complement to the other three, England 

Additional Reading: A. L. Lowell, “The Government of Eng¬ 
land”; Chap. XVIII, “The Commons Control of the Cabmet”; 
Chap. XXIII, “The Cabinet and the Country.” 


98 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


was the first to make effective the fourth principle of peace¬ 
ful orderly control—an effective means of recall. During the 
half century following Jefferson’s statement coincident with 
establishing solidarity of cabinet responsibilitythe passage of 
the Reform Acts^ and definition given to trial practice before 
the Committee-of-the-Whole^ the Crown was taken out of the 
category of responsible executive and was made effective as a 
part of the machinery of popular control. After making the 
Cabinet responsible as leaders of the Administration^ the 
Crown, no longer the head of the Administration, was made to 
represent the sovereignty of the whole nation, so far as it 
functioned at all; the Crown became the agent for seeing 
to it that the first two principles, election and majority 
rule, had a chance to operate when in the judgment of the 
representative body the leaders of the Administration should 
not be supported. The practice was: In case there should 
develop a deadlock between the executive (the Prime Minister 
and his cabinet) and the House, sitting as a jury of the 
nation and acting by majority vote, then with the consent 
of the Prime Minister, it was incumbent on the Crown to ask 
some one else to organize a cabinet which would have the con¬ 
fidence and support of a majority; but if the Prime Minister 
thought that the majority in the House did not fairly represent 
the people on the issue, and that the people would stand back 
of him and against the hostile majority in the House, it was 
made the duty of the Crown to call an election.^^ Thus all 
four principles were made effective, by which the people might 
control their leaders. Thus it was that by gradual process the 
mill-wrights of English democracy adjusted the last two of 
the four principles of popular control—the principles to which, 

^-Reference Beading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments 
and the World War*’; Chap. XI, “The Ministry and the 
Cabinet.” 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


99 


in this country, we up to that time had given little thought, 
because we had sought our safety in preventing the develop¬ 
ment of leadership within the governments^ 

It is also of interest to note what happened during this time 
in some of the other countries which adopted a constitutional 
form of government—and in which provision was made for 
centralized executive leadership. 

The Experience of France and Germany 

In France, the principles of popular election, acceptance of 
the decision of a majority, and possible recall administered 
through an elected President, were developed, but not an 
effective procedure for the arraignment of the Administration 
before the bar of public opinion for trial on evidence. There, 
as with us, the principle of responsibility is still confused; the 
cabinet is required to come before the Assembly, but does not 
have to stand or fall as a man; the Prime Minister and Cabinet 
are not made responsible in the same direct way as in England 
through control over supplies, but the estimates of each min¬ 
istry go before a legislative budget commission, and the com¬ 
mission, selected from the whole House by lot, submits the 
financial plan for action. Many eminent Frenchmen have been 
working for years for a more effective trial practice which 
would place responsibility on the executive and hold him to 
account to the assembly as a Court of Inquest, and insure that 
the action taken would be on evidence instead of gossip and 
impulse.^® The practices there have been severely criticised 
by men like M. Ribot, as conductive to patronage and waste. 

Slides: The Houses of Parliament; The House of Commons; The 
House of Lords; William E. Gladstone; Gladstone before 
Parliament; Lloyd George before the Country. 

Slides: Interior and Exterior, Chamber of Deputies. 

Reference Reading: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War”; Chaps. XVH, X:VHI. 


100 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


These criticisms translated into English might be mistaken for 
excerpts from our Congressional Record.* 

In the Imperial German Empire none of the four principles 
of popular control were made effective. 

Canadian Experience as Applied to the Third Principle of 
Control 

In Canada the principles of popular election, acceptance 
of the decision of a majority, and recall, are in full and effec¬ 
tive operation, but the third principle (the arraignment of the 
Administration before the bar of public opinion to be tried on 
evidence) has been made ineffective. This has been done in a 
very interesting way. While all of the machinery developed 
under the leadership of Gladstone was imported into Canada 
(in the British North American Act, and subsequent statutes), 
the mill-wrights there so geared it up as to defeat the pur¬ 
pose. Instead of the Committee on Public Accounts being 
made an effective staff agency for bringing out the case against 
the Administration, by being put under the leadership and 
control of the Opposition, it is put under the control of the 
Cabinet, the very persons to be investigated. Instead of it 
being an effective means of enabling the representative body— 

“To watch . . . the government; to throw 

the light of publicity on its acts; to compel full ex¬ 
planation of all of them which any one considers 
questionable,” 

it has been appropriated by the majority and used to en¬ 
force “gag rule.” With what effect can be imagined: the office 
of each minister became a political bargain counter, to dis¬ 
pense “patronage” and “pork” as it is called on this side of 
the line, with little opportunity given to the Opposition leaders 
to let the people and their representatives know what the facts 

*See Rene Stourrn—Le Budget, translation published by Institute 
of Government Research, Washington, 1917, page 69. 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 101 


were before a vote was taken—and the vote was largely a 
matter of testing an irresponsible party loyalty. In other 
words^ Canada has failed to utilize the critical opposition to 
insure to the people the operation of the principle suggested 
in the phrase^ “Eternal vigilance is the price of Liberty.” As 
with us, the opposition has been “gagged,” and when possible, 
strangled—the assumption being, that it did not have a useful 
public function to perform. 

Irresponsible Leadership the Result of Lack of an Effec¬ 
tive Mechanism of Control 

Now to return to our muttons: as has been said, in the 
United States we have given much thought to the first two 
principles of popular control laid down by Jefferson in 1801. 
The vote-casting mechanism has been worked out fairly well 
—by extension of the suffrage, by Corrupt-Practices-Acts, by 
adoption of the Australian and other systems of secret ballot; 
and since the Civil War the principle of majority rule so far 
as this is provided for or permitted under our constitutions, 
has not been challenged by organized force, although, as the 
machinery of election has worked, it has on at least one oc¬ 
casion been threatened—in the Hayes-Tilden election. The 
first two principles have been worked out fairly well, but they 
have been ineffective for purposes of popular control and for 
a very simple reason: The other two necessary parts of the 
mechanism of popular control were not worked out, and the two 
which were developed, being without the complementary parts, 
were geared up with'the existing institution in such a way as 
periodically to put the stamp of popular approval on the very 
thing that their mechanism of control was designed to prevent 
—irresponsible government. 

To put the situation baldly: instead of the people being 
placed in control of their service organization—the government 
—we have had “boss-rule.” Utilizing the lack of appreciation 


102 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


on the part of the people of the essential features of an 
effective mechanism of popular control, and being without re¬ 
sponsible leaders, the designing few who look upon govern¬ 
ment as an institution which they can use to grind their own 
grist have improvised a method of utilizing the electoral sys¬ 
tem so that there was no alternative open but to elect men 
picked out for them by a “boss.” And this has operated to the 
entire satisfaction of the “boss,” except at times of great civic 
awakening, when in spite of “boss-rule,” men like Jackson, 
Lincoln, Roosevelt and Wilson have come to the front as 
national leaders.^® 

Now, the opportunity of the boss, as has already been 
pointed out, is the outworking of rules and statute law under 
the constitution which operate to prevent responsible leader¬ 
ship within the government. Irresponsible leadership there¬ 
fore has grown up on the outside, gaining its support and 
following through an irresponsible political party “organiza¬ 
tion.” They frame the “issues”; they general the nominating 
conventions; they manage the “campaigns”; they control the 
propaganda. Then, after the election, those who receive the 
warrant of authority from the people “serve their term,” sub¬ 
ject to all the “influences” of the irresponsible “boss” and the 
irresponsible party “organization.” 


Slides: Republican and Democratic National Conventions; cast¬ 
ing his ballot; Presidential Inaugurals. 

Reference Beadinf/s: Ogg and Beard, “National Governments and 
the World War”; Chap. V, “The President.” James Bryce; 
“The American Commonwealth” (abridged edition) ; Chap. LIII, 
“Nominating Conventions”; Chap. LIV, “The Nominating Con¬ 
vention at Work.” 

Additional Readings: Beard, “American Government and Politics”; 
Chap. IX, “The Nomination and Election of the President.” 
Macy and Gannaway, “Comparative Free Governments”; Chap. 
XV, “The National Convention”; Chap. V, “The Election of the 
President.” 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 103 


The Adjustment of the Mechanism of Control to our Con¬ 
stitutional System 

This does not mean that the people should lose faith in the 
Constitution. Because of crudities and imperfections of 
mechanism found in operation we should not conclude that the 
fundamentals of construction are unsound. There is nothing 
in our history to even suggest that this “greatest of all demo¬ 
cratic charters^” this “code of the people’s liberties, political 
and civil, ... of many centuries of growth, which they 
willed to adopt in 1787,” should be regarded as obsolete;* nor 
does it mean that we should minimize or detract from the honor 
and respect in which we should hold the institutions under 
which America has become the most prosperous, and her people 
have remained the most free, among the nations of the earth. 
Simply because a few rats have found shelter in the house of 
the people it is not necessary to burn the house down to get rid 
of them. But it does mean that it is the part of wisdom to 
make it the duty of the head servants to find out where the rat 
holes are, and what is the essential neglect that has made the 
rats look to the house for their food supply. It means that pro¬ 
vision should be made under the Constitution for strong able 
leadership in making the government at all times effective for 
such service as is demanded of it; and that along with the 
power to lead there should be a corresponding means of control 
over leadership, so that it may at all times be responsive and 
responsible. 

Favorable Public Opinion an Essential 

Furthermore, this fact should give assurance to the American 
people in their efforts to rid themselves of irresponsible 
“bosses”: We have under the Constitution all the machinery 
required for purposes of popular control if it were so geared 
up as to effect this purpose. And it can be very quickly and 
* F. J. Stimson, “The American Constitution.” 


104 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


easily geared up, when the people decide that they want a 
means of control through which the acts and proposals of the 
leaders of the Administration may be made “visible,” and 
governing agents may be made “responsible.” To do this will 
require nothing more radical or difficult than to change the 
rules under which Congress and State legislatures operate, 
and to make certain corresponding changes in statute law. 
But before these changes can be made there must be a public 
demand which is both positive and insistent. 

The Possibility of Making the Four Principles of Control 
Effective by Change of ‘‘Rules” 

Here is something for Americans to think about—and think 
about seriously. Do they want “responsible” government? 
Do they want “visible” government? Do they want re¬ 
sponsible instead of irresponsible leadership? But first of all 
do they want an effective means of popular control—one which 
will make for such continuing adjustment as will operate in 
favor of continuing peace based on the good opinion of man¬ 
kind? To make it quite plain that all four principles of 
popular control may be made effective by simple adjustments, 
without making any claim whatever as to the desirability of 
the particular adaptation used for purposes of the illustration, 
let us see what could be done by a simple change in one or 
two “rules” of Congress—assuming of course that both the 
President and Congress were in agreement as to the desira¬ 
bility of such a change.* 

Let us picture President Wilson, through his Cabinet, exer¬ 
cising the powers recently given under the Overman Act, or, 

'^’'Reference Reacting: Ogg and Beard “National Governments and 
the World War”; Chap. IV, “The Congress: How Laws are 
Made.” 

Additional Reading.: Beard, “American Government and Politics”: 
Chaps. XII to XIV. 

*The illustration is adapted from one given in “Democracy in 
Reconstruction,” pp. 438-442. 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 105 


relying entirely on his constitutional rights, -coming before 
Congress with a proposal to reorganize our national bureau¬ 
cracy to make the Government a more effective instrument for 
service. This cannot be done all at once; it must necessarily 
take time. But he makes a vigorous beginning—and in Decem¬ 
ber next he comes before Congress with a plan, asking for 
support in the form of needed appropriations.^® 

Congress the Instrument of Inquiry, Criticism, and Dis¬ 
cussion 

Then let us picture Congress also doing its part as a court 
of inquest, a jury made up of representatives of the people. 
In special session called by the President in May they organize 
so that they may be prepared to criticize, discuss, approve, or 
disapprove the acts and proposals of the Administration; so 
that they may find out whether Mr. Wilson’s Cabinet are men 
who are to be trusted as executives. With patriotic devotion 
to the principles of democracy, as a court of political inquest 
and publicity, they adopt a procedure such that their findings 
may be based on evidence. They organize a Joint Recess 
Committee on Finance and Administration, whose membership 
is made up of the most competent critics in matters of this 
kind in Congress, and whose chairman is selected from the 
Opposition—from among those who do not agree with Mr. 
Wilson in matters of State policy. Senator Chamberlain heads 
the committee assisted by James R. Mann and they proceed at 
once to get ready for the next regular session. 

A Possible Procedure for Insuring “Visible” and “Re¬ 
sponsible” Government 

Then Congress adopts a procedure which requires that Ad¬ 
ministration bills and the budget proposed by the President 

Slides: President Wilson before Congress; The House of Repre¬ 
sentatives; the Senate; The House of Representatives during 
a debate. 


106 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


and his Cabinet shall first be taken up in a “Joint Committee 
of the Whole Congress/’ with the Cabinet present to present, 
explain, discuss, and defend. And in order that there shall 
be a real inquest—in order that fullest discussion and pub¬ 
licity may be given under constitutional guarantees of “free 
speech” and “free press”—they provide that the Opposition 
may be permitted to select special counsel for leadership in 
Committee of the Whole, in addition to the regular party whip. 
And to persons selected as counsel are given the same rights 
and powers as are given to members of the Cabinet, who are 
the President’s advisers—^thereby enabling them to manage 
the case of the Opposition against the Administration before 
the Committee of the Whole sitting as a grand jury. 

The Cabinet has been preparing its case for weeks before 
the regular session, at which the Administration bills and the 
Executive budget are to be submitted. They have kept in 
touch with what has been going on—having in mind that they 
will be called before the bar of the House. They have met 
together, and in conference with the President have decided 
what “the Administration” will stand for as a matter of public 
policy. They have organized their leadership that they may 
be in readiness to take the floor—knowing that the Executive 
is to be held to account. And when Congress meets they are 
ready to explain and defend. 

The Opposition is also prepared. The Joint Recess Com¬ 
mittee of Finance and Administration under Opposition leader¬ 
ship, with power to subpoena witnesses and documents, both 
before and after Congress meets, has become familiar with 
every act, with each item of the estimates and each report 
on expenditures submitted by the Administration as a bill of 
particulars. They also have come to know what were the 
methods used by the Administration in estimating future needs. 
This Recess Committee has prepared critical reports on air- 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 107 


craft construction; on shipbuilding; on purchasing equipment 
and supplies. And Opposition leaders have become familiar 
with these reports. 

Congress meets^ and the Opposition announces as special 
counsel Mr. Taft and Mr. Hughes. Two or three weeks are 
given to Opposition eounsel to prepare their case, get ready 
for the trials and arrange the strategy of the inquest before the 
Committee of the Whole so as to bring out every fact and 
reason opposed to the plan of reorganization and the requests 
for support proposed. During this time each member of 
Congress and special counsel, through Opposition members, 
are also given a chance to ask for the preparation of any 
further statements of fact needed by them to understand the 
^ business on hand or present the case of the Opposition. 

The Trial 

The day of trial comes; the press tables are erowded; the 
galleries are full. The Secretary of the Treasury, as the 
spokesman for the Administration, steps out and presents the 
case of the Administration in a budget speech giving an ac¬ 
count of Executive stewardship, explaining the new program 
for which support is asked. Then, after he has finished, Mr. 
Hughes rises and in behalf of the Opposition interposes this 
demurrer: He moves “that the Committee of the Whole Con¬ 
gress now rise and report to the House of Representatives, 
and the Senate of the United States, against the application 
of the Administration for more funds.” He argues' “that this 
action be taken without going into the acts and plans of the 
Administration in detail, for the reason that in the opinion of 
the Opposition the Cabinet cannot be trusted: that they have 
been weak and wasteful in time of great national stress.” 

Slides: Floor plans of the House of Representatives and the 
Senate. 


108 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


The People as Auditors 

The effect on the country of this proceeding is electric. In 
case the motion prevails, there is no recourse for the President 
other than for him to reorganize his Cabinet—appoint persons 
who together can command the support of a majority. The 
proceedings of Congress at once have a news value as great as 
a cable from Pershing that the German Army has again in¬ 
vaded the Western Front. And instead of the public being 
reduced to reading petty attacks of irresponsible persons on 
the Administration, such statements, whether made as reports 
of standing committees or by members attempting to attract 
attention to themselves by giving out “interviews,” have no 
better standing than street gossip. First comes the hearing 
on Mr. Hughes’s motion: Should this be denied, then in case 
a majority vote for a hearing on the Administration bills, the 
case of the Administration would be set for a definite time, 
to be tried on its merits. The budget and the reorganization 
program of the Executive are taken up line by line in which 
an informal vote is taken in Committee of the Whole Congress 
on the proposals, and requests for funds of each department 
separately. This is done in order that the Administration and 
each member of Congress, and the people, may know upon just 
what point these proposals and requests for funds fail to get 
the support of a majority. It definitely fixes responsibility 
and clarifies issues. 

Responsible Leadership, a Necessary Result 

However fanciful or far-fetched this description of an imag¬ 
inary Responsible Cabinet, brought before the bar of an imag¬ 
inary Congress, sitting in an imaginary Committee-of-the- 
Whole-Congress, to prove its case when application is made for 
support under imaginary rules of procedure which give to an 
Opposition fullest opportunity to interrogate and criticise—the 
proponents present to explain, answer and defend; however 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 109 


“un-American” it may seem to put into the hands of the criti¬ 
cally disposed representatives of the people the fullest powers 
of inquisition organized under Opposition Leadership, aided by 
Counsel and staff; however improbable it may be that a Presi¬ 
dent would take the initiative in seeking to bring about a 
practice which would require the heads of the administration 
to go personally before Congress, sitting as a court of public 
inquest in committee of the whole, or that Chairmen of Stand¬ 
ing Committees would come forward with a proposal to re¬ 
linquish their present monopoly and power; whatever the im¬ 
probability that either the Executive would come forward with 
such a demand or that Congress would voluntarily change its 
rules—the conclusion seems beyond question that some such 
organization and procedure must ultimately be adopted before 
we can have “visible government,” And if the representatives 
of the people, after they are elected, cannot be relied on to 
take the initiative, if they cannot see that the present rules 
make for “irresponsible” and “invisible” government, then as¬ 
suming that public opinion will support it, a leadership on the 
outside, like that of Jackson, or Lincoln, or Roosevelt, may be 
looked for to organize the people politically to make the neces¬ 
sary changes in rules and practices, which have grown up to 
make the principles of popular control effective—to give to the 
people a basis for deliberative judgment and enable them 
through election to express a majority opinion on issues raised 
by leaders whom they can hold to account. 

Need for Conservatism 

But wait: Let’s look ahead before we leap even in our 
political imaginings. We are living in the house for which 
structural changes are proposed. Before we spend our time 
working out the detail drawings for the enlargement of the 
windows to let in more light, and widening the doors of 
publicity, let’s take account of the effect of each suggested 


no 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


alteration on the structure as a whole. Let us first con¬ 
sider what further changes would necessarily follow so simple 
a thing as a change of one or two rules of Congress so as 
to provide that each executive proposal or request for funds 
shall first be taken up in Committee-of-the-Whole after the 
manner of a court of inquest, with leaders of the adminis¬ 
tration present to explain and defend. Assuming that both the 
President and Congress agreed, what would happen.^ First 
we will take the case of a majority of members of Congress, 
in one or both houses, being opposed to the Cabinet, opposed 
to the measure or policy proposed, and refusing to vote ap¬ 
propriations until the President had found some one who could 
get together a Cabinet with a following large enough to com¬ 
mand the confidence and support of a majority. If an under¬ 
standing were had between President Wilson and the leaders 
of Congress, that the rules should be changed in some such 
manner as is assumed for the purposes of the illustration, and 
that both branches would co-operate to readjust the machinery 
of control to bring it into harmony (let us carry it to the ex¬ 
treme of requiring that majorities in both houses be har¬ 
monized) what would necessarily follow? Obviously three 
adjustments within the government would come about. At 
once the President would lose his partisan character; the head 
of the Cabinet (if it were understood that the Cabinet must 
stand or fall as a whole) would become the head of the party 
or combination of parties in control; the leader of the Opposi¬ 
tion would become the head of the minority or combination 
parties out of control. But other changes outside the govern¬ 
ment would also necessarily follow. In the first place “irre¬ 
sponsible party bosses” would be put out of business; this 
would necessarily follow because the Prime Minister would 
have taken over all the functions of the “boss-of-the-ins” and 
the “Opposition Leader” would have taken over all the func- 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 


111 


tions of the “boss-of-the-outs”; from their positions and their 
leadership as “bosses/’ they would be converted into public 
service—the one would serve as the responsible head of the 
Administration, the other would serve as the responsible head 
of the inquisitorial forces, relied on for the development of 
evidence as a basis for criticism in the exercise of popular con¬ 
trol over the Administration. Furthermore the “organization” 
of the political parties would also become responsible; instead 
of the leader or the “boss” of the majority party being some¬ 
one who by secret methods and by processes of “pull” has 
risen to position and power through associating with him an 
invisible, intangible and irresponsible coterie of persons, who 
keep a following together by the distribution of “contracts” 
and “jobs” and “franchises” obtained by processes of secret- 
diplomacy, the leader of the majority would be someone invited 
by the President to associate with him men who had the confi¬ 
dence of a majority, and for whom the majority would be 
willing to assume responsibility. And the leader of the opposi¬ 
tion would be someone, chosen by members of the representa¬ 
tive body who were critically disposed toward the Administra¬ 
tion, of such recognized ability in the public service that he 
would give to the Opposition the best standing and the best 
chance of success in a trial of the administration at the bar of 
public opinion,—one who from his public experience would be 
thought best able to watch the leaders of the Administration 
and bring them to account, and who as a reward, in case of a 
judgment adverse to the leader of the Administration, might 
look forward to becoming the responsible Ijead of the public 
service. 

What has been said only goes to show that any change based 
on the assumption that we are to have “visible government,” 
must result in a broad overhauling of practices which have de¬ 
veloped under the Constitution—and that no attempt should 


112 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


be made to rid ourselves of “invisible” government unless the 
people are not only ready to demand, but ready to stand back 
of, and if need be to fight for, the things which go with it. 

Changes Needed to Make Popular Control Effective 
Need Not Change Organization of Government 

From this, however, it is not to be assumed that needed 
changes to make the operation of popular control effective 
would necessarily change either the organization of the admin¬ 
istrative machinery of government, or the committee organiza¬ 
tion of Congress. Changes in the organization of the adminis¬ 
tration might be found desirable, as has been frequently urged, 
but they would not necessarily follow—it would only make cer¬ 
tain their responsibility which at the present time is confused 
and divided with a constantly increasing web of red tape 
wound around them in the form of statutory regulation, on the 
one hand instituted by Congressional Committees in their 
efforts to eontrol their action, and on the other hand, in the 
form of administrative orders to protect the heads of bureaus 
and departments from public criticism—having no other 
means of proteeting themselves under conditions as they exist. 
Changes in the organization of standing committees might also 
be found desirable, but the only change in organization which 
would necessarily follow would be in the relation of leadership. 
The chairmanships of the critical committees, such as the Com¬ 
mittees on Public Expenditures, to be effective would neces¬ 
sarily be chosen by and from the organized Opposition. With 
this change in leadership even the prineiple of seniority might 
stand. It might also be found desirable to organize a “super¬ 
committee” as has been proposed, one on each side, to manage 
such inquiries as pertained to budget proposals, making the 
special committees in effect sub-committees composed of “spe¬ 
cialists” and aided by staff experts. In fact, some such ar¬ 
rangement would go far to cure such defects as have developed 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 113 


in the British Parliamentary System. This would give to Con¬ 
gress the strongest features of the British^ the French and the 
American systems. 

The whole theory of democracy rests on popular sovereignty 
—control by the people. Obviously what is needed to allay 
distrust of both branches of the government. Federal and 
State, is a method, not necessarily the one used for purposes 
of illustration, but some method, for: (1) clarifying issues— 
making them the issues tried and discussed and voted on in the 
court of political inquest; (2) bringing out the evidence on 
both sides of every mooted question and giving the people the 
benefit of deliberation; (3) giving to the President either a 
non-partisan character, representing the people as a whole— 
making him an intermediate court of review in the exercise of 
his veto power—or frankly making him Prime Minister; (4) 
making the campaign a contest between great leaders who 
stand for the issues which they have fought for, instead of a 
campaign of “unheard-ofs” put out to catch votes on a plat¬ 
form ‘‘made to run on” by irresponsible “bosses” that the peo¬ 
ple can neither see nor control. Under our Constitution as it 
stands, providing for fixed terms, the' verdict of the people 
would be a delayed verdict, and the election would have a 
crowded calendar. But even at that the control of the people 
could be made direct* and certain. 

Constitutional Revision May Be Taken Up Later if 
Needed 

Thi^ most serious objection to be urged against changes in 
rule^/to make the leaders of the administration responsible is 
thi/: that under our Constitution there is no way of breaking a 
deadlock between the executive and the legislative branches if 
“the power to control the purse” in the hands of the legislature 
is made effective as a means of enforcing responsibility to the 
representative body. Suppose, says the critic, the executive 


114 


ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT 


refuses to reorganize his cabinet to secure the support of a 
majority. Suppose the cabinet refused to come personally 
before the committee of the whole. Make any supposition 
which you wish, the effect of which results in a deadlock, and 
what can be done about it.^ But this is not the weakness of a 
scheme which inheres in a change to enforce responsibility. 
Under a Constitution which provides for fixed terms and in 
which there is no provision for calling a special election to 
resolve a deadlock by appeal to the people, there is no solution 
other than common sense or a revolution. Suppose that Con¬ 
gress should refuse to pass a resolution of credit when the 
appropriation bills were not passed before June 30, as not 
infrequently occurs,—what then.^ 

It’s all a question whether the people want “visible” and 
“responsible” government; and if they do, this can be made 
effective without changing the Constitution. But when that 
decision is reached, it may be found that responsibility may be 
more direct, and representative government more certain in its 
operation, if the Constitution is so changed that the President 
or Congress can call a special election to settle the issue in 
hand. This would put into the hands of the minority a refer¬ 
endum with the approval of the President; and thereby it 
would put into the hands of the people an effective means of 
recall. This would be consistent with democracy. Such a pro¬ 
vision, however, would be to little purpose without first recon¬ 
stituting a form for the initial inquiry into every question of 
political and social justice through which the issues might be 
defined, the related facts developed, and a vote of representa¬ 
tives taken so that the people might act intelligently when 
appealed to. 

The first great problem in political readjustment to serve 
the ends of democracy is the development of a procedure to 
make our duly constituted representative political forums effec- 


POPULAR CONTROL OF LEADERSHIP 115 


tive agencies for the initial trial of political causes which affect 
the vital interests of the whole people—comparable to the pro¬ 
cedure which has been established in our duly constituted rep¬ 
resentative judicial forums—trial by jury. This would not 
only make the representative system itself more effective, but 
it would also enhance the value of all of the non-official civil 
agencies such as the various national, local and special civic 
societies, boards, chambers, committees, the “press” and the 
various forums for discussion in exercise of the right of 
“popular assembly.” 


Reference ReadiiKjs: La])p, “Owr America—The Elements of 
Civics^’; Chap. XV, “Selecting Public Officers”; Chap. XVII, 
“Discharging Officers and Employees.” Beard, American 
Citizenship”; Chap. Xll, “The Political Party and the Govern¬ 
ment”; Chap. XIII, “Representative Government and Democ¬ 
racy.” W. B. Giiitteaii, '‘^Government and Polities in the United 
States”; Chaps. XXII to XXVI. W. B. Guitteau, ''PrepaHuff 
for Citizenship”; Chap. XIV, “Congress and Its Work.” A. W. 
Dunn, ‘‘The Community and the Citizen”; Chap. XX, “Some 
Defects in the Self-Government of Our Communities.” Cleve¬ 
land and Shafer, “Democracy in Reconstruction”; Chap. XX, 
“Need for Readjustment of Relations Between the Executive 
and the Legislative Branches of Government.” Bryce, “The 
American Commonwealth” (abridged edition); Chap. XVI, 
“Congressional Finance”; Chapter XXIV, “Comparison of the 
American and European Systems.” Ogg and Beard, “National 
Governments and the World War”; Chap. XIII, “Parliament 
aty Work.” 

Ad0tional Readiny: Beard, “American Government and Politics”; 

‘ Chap. XXIII, “Popular Control in State Governments”; Chap. 
XV, “Taxation and Finance.” Merriam, “American Political 
Theories,” ])p. 77-83. John R. Commons, “Proportional Repre¬ 
sentation”; Chaps. Ill, V, and VI. 


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AUTHOR’S NOTE 


In planning the work of instruction in Citizenship it was 
thought desirable to subdivide the materials into seven parts^ 
six of which would deal with concrete problems of services 
rendered by the government to the public. The seventh division 
deals with subjects of “over-head” organization and manage¬ 
ment and with the relations of the government as a whole to 
the people. 

The few weeks available put the author under the necessity 
of limiting discussion to a few topics. The subjects chosen 
were four essentials—each of which is taken for a chapter 
heading. 

In the selection of materials bearing on these four subjects, 
excerpts from writings of men of accepted authority and wide 
appeal, have been used as far as possible. Foot-notes have 
been added as “Reference Readings” to books which are sup¬ 
plied to camp libraries, and citations to other “Additional 
Readings,” authorities for which have been furnished to 
educational centers. References are also made to lantern-slide 
materials that are prepared in sets for illustration in case their 
use is desired. In this event the text is offered as an aid to 
interpretation. 

A supplementary text has also been prepared by Professor 
John A. Fairlie of the University of Illinois, entitled “Prob¬ 
lems of Governmental Organization”—the purpose being to 
provide materials for the more concrete discussion of the every¬ 
day problems of government. 


F. A. C. 


iU 




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